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OUR FIRST HALF 
MILLION 

The Story of Our National Army 
By Captain X 

3"th Field Artillery 
Illustrated 




NEW YORK 

THE H. K. FLY COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS 



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Copyright 1918, by 
The H. K. Fly Company. 



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NOV -7 1918 

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iTo Eleanob Waed Fox 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. In Cantonment : 15 

11. "Making Men" . .: S7 

III. "The Aemy Laughs" i 51 

IV. The Spirit of Our Men 77 

V. *'The Job of Soldiering" • 94i 

VL ^'Harpooning the Hun" : ISI 

VII. **Remembee San Juan" : 141 

VIII. "What Our Soldiers Like" ., 165 

IX. *'The West Point of Our Civilian 

Army" ,. .-., 188 

X. "The Glory of the Guns" mi 

XL Why We Will Defeat Germany .... 23S 

XIL ^'All in the Day's Work" 253 

Xin. *«Thb Magic of Mars". ..,., ^79 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



Upon his arrival at camp, the recruit's steps 
lead from the railroad station to the regi- 
mental infirmary Fkontispiecb y 

The Y. M. C. A's shacks are made attractive 
places to visit, and once there the soldier is 
in an atmosphere that is clean 49 v' 

The National Army is serious. It is dignified. 
It has taken the war with a philosophy quite 
like the French ..: 82 / 

One long thrust, a short jab, a leap, and they're 
at the next set of dummies 125 ' 

Never heard of the Ninety-second? It's the 
Negro Division of the National Army. The 
Division that's going to write its name big 
before the Hun gets on his knees 142 

At their disposal were all the lessons of the 
European War 195. 

Our trim Three-inchers are slender and good to 
look upon; with their long, slim barrels they 
suggest sleeping power 216 



FOREWORD 

Ian Hay told the story of Britain's First 
Hundred Thousand. This is the tale of Amer- 
ica's First Half MiUion. 

One has fried to tell of the National Army 
in its making. One has sought to reduce some 
of the sincerity of our men in cantonment to 
pen and ink. That has not been difficult, for 
the very air thereabout breathes with the deep 
purpose of the new army and its deep convic- 
tion in the justice of our cause. We will not 
lose. 

There is a saying in the army that an Artil- 
lery Captain's work is never done. The small 
hours of the morning, and only them, belonged 
to the writing of this book. Literary polish it 
lacks. No effort has been made to attain it. 
The one thing sought after was sincerity — ^to 
tell just what the selected men of the Na- 
tional Army are doing, how they are faring, 

ix 



X FOREWORD 

why their very presence in uniform is the dawn 
of a new and more glorious America. And 
their slogan is "Berlin or Bust!" . . . And 
it 5 AaZZ be Berlin! 

CAPTAIN X , 

Camp , 

Jan. 5, 1918. 

3— th Field Artillery, 
National Army. 



TO-MORROVS^ 

It is springtime and children romp. The 
crocus and violets are coming out, and across 
the nursery window a tall maple weaves a leafy 
lattice of green. There beside his boy a father 
stands, his hand upon the sturdy little fellow's 
shoulder, his eyes lost in dwelling upon a mem- 
ory that he seems to find somewhere beyond 
the rolling April hills. He hears a skylark's 
song; the sparrows are contentedly chattering. 
Across the blue a crow darts ; it is as if he must 
flee with his sombre colors from here; for all is 
happiness. The world is at peace. 

"Just ten years ago to-day," the father says 
aloud, patting the shoulder of his boy. "Ten 
years." 

"Daddy! Will I be a soldier, too?" 

His face filled with understanding, the 
father regards him. 

"Boy," he proposes, not answering the ques- 
tion, "I had a friend in France." 

xi 



xii TO-MORROW 

"Yes, daddy; I know. He was a soldier." 

"One night, son, when the guns were growl- 
ing along the Meuse, he came with other 
French officers to visit our battery. He told 
me that night, as we sat in a dug-out and 
smoked, a story. I'll tell it now to you." 

The boy claps his hands. He likes his daddy 
to tell him stories of the war. 

"Son," his father begins, "my friend told me 
that when he was very young his father took 
him on his knee and told him: 'My boy, in 
eighteen-seventy your father went to war, 
against the Prussians. And, my boy, you will 
have to go to war some day, too, because your 
father lost/ It was a French father who told 
his boy that, a little boy, just like you." 

"Yes, daddy." 

"And, son," and the father snatches up the 
youngster in his arms and hugs him against his 
heart. 

"But you," he promises his boy, "you won't 
have to go to war — never, son — for there is no 
more war, son — :no; it's gone, son — gone for 
good. For ten years ago your father went to 
war against Prussia, and your father won," 

But the youngster spies a playmate crossing 
the lawn and, wriggling from his father's arms. 



TO-MORROW xiii 

he runs to join him. A shadow briefly crosses 
the father's face ; but then he smiles. "Youth 
to youth," he thinks, and then he could have 
sung for joy as he thought that he was one 
who, ten years before, had marched away to 
make safe a world for the children. 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 
CHAPTER I 

IN CANTONMENT 

Spaces of sandy pine woods, swelling fields 
ready for the harvest, the sleepy villages of 
south Jersey, had been whirling past our motor 
— and then we got our first glimpse of Camp 
Dix. A confusion of unpainted pine sheds 
took shape; a towering dark skeleton that 
might have been an Artillery observation post 
on France's front, but merely a water tower in 
the making; and then the Army trucks rum- 
bling through the mazes of vaguely defined 
roads, workmen swarming by the thousands, a 
Negro militia sentinel, who shouted at us: 
"Halt! Who's dar?" . . . That was our first 
impression of Camp Dix. 

Commissioned at the Training Camp of 

Madison Barracks, we had been ordered with 

hundreds of our brother officers to report for 

15 



16 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

duty at this New Jersey cantonment of the 
new National Army — America's answer to the 
German war lords. It was with a thrill that 
one realized that at this same time ten thou- 
sand officers, products of the intensive courses 
conducted by the War Department during the 
summer now ending, were reporting at canton- 
ments similar to Camp Dix throughout our 
land. America had called to arms. The first 
draft, six hundred thousand men for the new 
National Army, would all be in these canton- 
ments before winter's end. And we were to 
make them into soldiers and lead them into 
battle — in France. ... A glorious new ad- 
venture had begun. 

Now it is upon this National Army that the 
safety of our land depends. It is not my pur- 
pose to present the facts for this statement. 
They have been before the public, brought 
there by our President, by our Secretary of 
State. The designs of the Imperial German 
Government upon the liberty of the world, 
upon our liberty, have been officially put be- 
fore our people by Washington. Our little 
Regular Army, our National Guard, is speed- 
ing overseas. In that vast battle line of Eu- 
rope they will be swallowed up. But they will 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION IT 

hold the line for America until the National 
Army comes, until we come. Not forgetting 
that we number but a half million or so, and 
that when we leave cantonment others will 
come in, be trained, and go as we shall go. 
And so as our pressure gets greater will the 
Hohenzollern sue for peace. For as the 
French say, ''Jusqu' a bouf'— ''To the End!" 
iWe shall finish this Imperial menace now; we 
shall not leave it for our sons to fight over. 
And that is the mood of our awakened nation,^ 
of its National Army. 

Will it be able to accomplish that? Will the 
American make as good a soldier as the for- 
midable helmeted man of the Kaiser's legions ? 
Have these drafted men the stuff? What of 
the spirit? Has the mass of America been 
civilian so long that the problem of having it 
act and think in a military way will be over- 
>\ helming? . . . Let us see. 

Come back with me to the cantonment in 
Jersey as we saw it that first day. There, near 
Wrightstown, one of those four-corner vil- 
lages with a "general store," a wooden city was 
rising overnight. To the swarmings of eight 
thousand workmen, a mad clattering of ham- 
mers, the shouts of laborers, unloading lumber 



18 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

from an interminable line of flat cars, the com- 
ings and goings of preoccupied Engineer Offi- 
cers, farmers, busy gathering in their crops 
that fell within the confines of this new mili- 
tary area, and the bewildered questionings of 
civilian concession seekers. Camp Dix grew. 

Where on this tract of pine-fringed Jersey 
flatland there were in July but a few isolated 
farmhouses, there was by August-end the 
sturdy unpainted shape of a permanent mili- 
tary garrison. Where of a morning, so it 
seemed, there had been but a pile of lumber, 
evening often found the skeleton of a pine 
shed. Magically the framework filled in; 
buildings grew from nothing in mere days. 
Wasn't it Cadmus who showed his teeth and a 
host of armed men appeared? 

We officers were at Camp Dix for more than 
a week before the first of the National Army 
came. We thought, "What will they be like? 
How will they take to military training? 
Have they the fighting stuff in them?" Ha- 
rassing speculations, these, for the officers who 
were called upon to produce results with the 
new army. 

As always, rumor ran wild. There were 
tales of the Socialists, of the I. W. W., of 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 19 

German agents who had cleverly waged cam- 
paigns in the draft centers. Not a little ap- 
prehension was felt over what these breeders 
of sedition might have created. And then the 
men came. 

In a Field Artillery regiment there hap- 
pened one of those little incidents which often 
give an index to the tenor of great happen- 
ings. A newspaper artist came down from 
New York. He visited my Battery after hav- 
ing made pictures of some of the recruits in 
another regiment. He asked me, "What is a 
five-per-cent. man? I heard one of the rookies 
over in the next barracks boasting that he was 
five per cent.; it sounded funny to me — ^five 
per cent." 

I explained to the artist that a five-per-cent. 
man was one who had been first called to the 
colors. 

That rookie — ^bless him! — had deemed it an 
honor. 

Away with the idea that because the Ameri- 
can has been fed up so long on the theory of 
doing what he pleases, when he pleases, that he 
will not accept military service. The doubters, 
the scoffers, the alarmists, forecasting dire 
trouble with these drafted men, those persons 



20 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

simply did not know their country. They did 
not know the men who composed it. 

Certain newspapers in discussing the draft 
during the summer used an unfortunate word. 
It was "conscript." With that word one asso- 
ciates dragging footsteps, sullen hearts, down- 
cast eyes. But these men that came to us were 
not conscripts; they were, in fact, simply re- 
paying their country in its hour of need for 
everything their country had done for them 
and for their fathers. Which, if you don't 
think is much, travel across the face of South- 
ern, Eastern Europe and the Balkans, as you 
may have done; see what life offers to man- 
kind there. No, not conscripts, these men of 
the new National Army; rather men who 
thoroughly understood what they owed their 
country; and other men who had not thought 
of that, but still felt something intangible in 
the air. For America had called upon them 
to help. 

I shall tell the story of my old Battery; it is 
the story of every Battery, of every Company 
throughout the United States ; it is the tale of 
the First Half Million. 

The men came to us from the small towns 
and cities of a county in the western part of 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 21 

New York State. The total of the first five 
per cent, was twenty-one rookies. One was a 
bank clerk, another a brakeman, another a 
waiter ; two were lawyers. There was a rubber 
worker, electricians, a chauffeur, a hotel chef, 
a barber, a contractor. Could anything be 
more democratic? 

In military things they were absolutely 
green. In about two months we could com- 
fortably rely upon half of these men as fairly 
efficient, non-commissioned officers. Old-time 
soldiers will smile at this. Those who smile do 
not yet know what it is possible to accomplish 
by new intensive training that the war has de- 
veloped. They do not know that in August, 
1914, England took college men, trained them 
day and night for five weeks, and sent them 
into the field as Lieutenants. That was neces- 
sity; the Lieutenants were not efficient at the 
front, but they became so in time. But from 
1914 to 1917 the makers of armies learned 
much. Our experiment in this work was the 
officers' training camps of the past summer. 
What was accomplished can be seen by any 
trained military observer who watches the of- 
ficers of the Reserve Corps moulding the 
iS^ational Army. 



22 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

Here is the meat of it: Not a few of the 
drafted men are of a caliber that could have 
won commissions in the officers' training 
camps, and the identical methods that were put 
into effect there by the regular army instruct- 
ors were applied here in September to some 
few of the draft. For this was the situation : 

Our records showed us that by the first of 
October each Battery would have received its 
full war strength, 193 men. To handle these 
men there was a Captain and four Lieutenants. 
Where were the non-commissioned officers 
coming from? Our Battery got two from the 
Regular Army ; we needed nearly fifty. Allah 
provides no non-coms. Our Regular Army 
already in France could ill afford to spare any 
of its Drill Sergeants. It was up to us to 
make our own. And just as the barracks were 
put up overnight, so were the many Drill Ser- 
geants. 

At the outset a record was made of every 
man; his character was studied. Down into 
the Captain's book went certain information. 
Was his intelligence above the average ? How 
did he respond to discipline? Did he uncon- 
sciously have a military bearing, or was it pos- 
sible to give him one? Did he think quickly 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 23 

and accurately, or was he slow-witted? Did he 
rattle? What had he done in civil life? 

As swiftly as accuracy would permit this 
data was obtained. A commander made men- 
tal notes as to whom might be used as non- 
commissioned officers and who not. Training 
' — the task of first making the men soldiers, be- 
fore specializing them in artillery or infantry 
• — began. Do you know the difference between 
the American and the German attitude toward 
soldiers? If you would understand this Na- 
tional Army, if you would put yourself in a 
position to judge accurately what you may 
expect from your army, you should under- 
stand that difference. It is the key to the sit- 
uation. 

The Germans utterly destroy a private's in- 
dividuality; regard him as a mere piece of 
mechanism. In the training camps this para- 
graph from United States Army Regulations 
was impressed upon us : '''Officers will keep in 
CIS close touch as possible with the men under 
their command and will strive to build up such 
relations of confidence and sympathy as will 
insure the free approach of their men to them 
for counsel and assistance/' 

That brings us to the composite rookie of the 



24 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

National Army. Bill Hawkins, who had gone 
through the High School of Olean, New York, 
who had gotten a job in the bank and who had 
never been farther away from home than New 
York City in his life, found in the mail one 
morning a little slip telling him to report at 
an Exemption Board for physical examina- 
tion. His spirits at that time registered minus. 
He had felt all along that Tom and Jim would 
be called, but somehow he'd miss; it simply 
couldn't be. It was something like the world 
coming to an end. 

To the Exemption Board Bill went. A doc- 
tor punched his ribs, indeed gave Bill a very 
trying quarter of an hour. Zealous persons, 
these small-town doctors, so eager were they 
not to be accused of wrongly exempting men 
that they sent some to camp physically unfit — 
who were returned to their homes. We got 
one man from a. Jersey town who had two 
thumbs and six fingers on his right hand. An 
artillery officer remarked that he would be 
useful on the guns setting off data on the in- 
struments with some of his fingers and using 
the others for cleaning the lens. But the Divi- 
sional Surgeon could not see it that way, and 
back the rookie went to Palmyra, N. J. 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 25 

Of course, that was a singular case; it is a 
commentary, however, on the over-zealousness 
of rural doctors. All such cases were carefully 
weeded out by the Army Surgeons at camp so 
that the work of training was only begun with 
men fit for it. Bill Itawkins, for example, 
from the bank in Olean, was stamped "O. K." 
by the Army Surgeon who examined him as 
soon as he reported to camp. With Bill were 
many men from his home town ; for the plan of 
the organizers of the National Army was to 
assign men from the same locality to the same 
regiment. One of the many special trains that 
on September 6th were hammering toward 
cantonments in all parts of the country 
brought Bill Hawkins to Camp Dix. He was 
met at the station by a young officer who wore 
U. S. R. on his collar and who had a steady, 
appraising eye. He marched Bill off with his 
new comrades to the barracks. Here he was 
given a mess kit. From Napoleon has come 
down the dictum, "An army marches on its 
stomach." Bill Hawkins sat down to a warm 
meal. His first deep impression was one of 
savory food. 

Presently he was taken out in the barrack 
yard with his new comrades and lined up ac- 



26 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

cording to height. This done, Bill was as- 
signed to a temporary squad and was dis- 
missed with the admonition that he remain 
around quarters. Were it not for the newness 
of it all, his curiosity excited, he must have felt 
depressed. What a sight that was! Men in 
all kinds of civilian attire, trying to keep some 
kind of a military line, but never having been 
taught; they were quite hopeless. It is not the 
most inspiring thing in the world to be think- 
ing about joining an army — thoughts of trim 
uniforms, of bands, flags — and then to be 
herded into a barrack yard in civilian clothes. 
It gives the look of and induces the feeling of 
a mob of strikers or "down-and-outs" waiting 
outside of a factory for a job. It is why offi- 
cers are invariably so anxious to get their men 
in uniform. 

Unprepared as we were for war, it was little 
short of a miracle how we were ever able to get 
the men into uniform. Nobody was to blame. 
The blame lay upon the whole nation, upon 
our lack of foresight, upon our fatuous belief 
as a people that war could never come to us, 
upon our credulity in believing the friendly 
assurances of the Imperial German Govern- 
ment. 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 27 

Superhuman efforts dribbled supplies into 
camp, but only America that built a vast coun- 
try out of the wilderness could have done this 
— outfitted as many men as we did for war on 
such short notice. 

Bill Hawkins was finally given his outfit. 
He was entirely satisfied until he put on the 
Army shoes; they felt too big. Greatly ex- 
cited, he sought a Lieutenant. "These shoes 
are seven and one-half," he said. "I wear sev- 
ens. Could I have them exchanged?" 

The Lieutenant, w^ho had spent the summer 
hiking for ten miles at a stretch, spoke with 
rare wisdom — the wisdom of blistered feet. "I 
thought the same as you do. Private Haw- 
kins," he said, "and the first march I took 
landed me in the hospital. Then I learned 
that on a stiff march the foot swells to a size 
one-half larger. Keep the shoes." 

So, with his American Army shoes, which 
are the lightest and strongest in the world, 
with his canvas leggings, khaki pants, woolen 
shirt to match, campaign hat, its jaunty red 
cord of the Artillery, the only touch of color 
about him, Bill Hawkins fell in line to get his 
first instruction as a soldier. To the tune of 
"Attention!" "Right Face!" "Forward 



28 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

March!" "Halt!" he began. He thought the 
Lieutenant in charge made a lot of fuss over 
nothing. 

**I want you men," said the Lieutenant, "to 
stand at attention with your heels together — 
that means together, not one a quarter of an 
inch ahead of the other. I want you to rest the 
weight of the body lightly on the balls of your 
feet. Stand erect, chest out, shoulders thrown 
back, stomach pulled in, back slightly arched 
at the waist. Head is firm, chin high, eyes 
looking straight to the front. Hands hang 
naturally at the sides, thumbs just touching 
the seam of your trousers. That is called the 
Position of the Soldier. Try it." 

Bill Hawkins tried; he tried again; he kept 
on trying; he tried for half an hour. But he 
couldn't see the sense of it. Later in the day 
at a conference it was explained to him. 

"The work you did to-day," said the Cap- 
tain, "was to give you complete control of your 
body in drills, so you can get around quickly 
and easily at every command. You all know 
how to walk and run, but you don't know how 
to do it without making extra work of it. You 
are being taught how to walk at a steady gait. 
Our military experts tried all sorts of ways 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 29 

before coming to the conclusion that marching 
one hundred and twenty steps to the minute, 
keeping the upper part of the body erect, not 
exerting it, will find a man fresher at the end 
of a hard hike than any other gait." 

Bill Hawkins accepted this on faith, and 
having good stuff in him, made up his mind to 
get it right. Three weeks later he was made a 
Corporal — but I anticipate. There were those 
of his comrades, however, who could see no 
sense in all this, who never did a thing in the 
prescribed way unless an officer was standing 
over them. But there was always "kitchen 
police" for them to do. 

The next sensation Bill Hawkins had was 
the military physical training drill. This gave 
him a bad half hour. He discovered the loca- 
tion of muscles, the existence of which he was 
unaware. Secretly he raged against this exer- 
cise. "I came here to fight," he muttered. He 
had wondered what "Arms forward and up- 
ward raise" had to do with war. 

"For every man an army has in the hos- 
pital," he later heard the Captain say, "five 
men are needed to get him there and take care 
of him. A fighting man's worth depends upon 
his physical fitness. He must be strong enough 



so OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

to stand all kinds of physical strain, all kinds 
of weather, resist all kinds of disease. Also, 
his nerves and mentality must be in a condition 
to bear up under the terrific clamor of modern 
battle. These physical training exercises make 
you strong enough to stand that. It is the old 
story — the weak perish, the strong survive. I 
take it you all want to survive ; don't spoil your 
chances by not doing your exercise conscien- 
tiously and neglecting the care of your body." 

Bill Hawkins understood and appreciated. 
Like most of his comrades in the National 
Army, he decided not to be a weak sister. But 
the next day he got an awful shock. He was 
taught how to salute and told he would be re- 
quired to salute all officers. Something rose 
within him. He told himself as he put up his 
hand, imitating the instructor, that he was only 
doing this because he was compelled to. Nor 
was he alone in this. Back in quarters with 
his comrades that night a little group began 
to buzz. 

"I don't see why we have to be saluting all 
the time. I don't mind it once in a while ; but 
this putting your hand up to your hat every 
time you see an officer, it's like a servant or 
something." There was a chorus of muttered 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 31 

assent. A generation of "I'm .as good as the 
next man'' thought was misinterpreting the 
salute. 

Bill Hawkins made a few resolutions before 
he went to bed. He'd be "damned" if he'd 
salute all the time ! 

The next day he passed an ofBcer ; he knew 
he had been told to salute officers. The officer 
did not seem to be looking at him. Bill's 
thought was, "Can I get away with it?" He 
failed to salute and quickened his pace. 

"Come back here!" the officer called. Bill, 
feeling he was going to be hung or something, 
nervously awaited developments. 

"I want you to realize," said the officer, 
taking in at a glance that Bill was a recruit, 
"that you have been the cause of my disobey- 
ing Army Regulations. I owe you a salute 
and I cannot give it to you. By the Regula- 
tions I am compelled to salute every enlisted 
man. The prescribed form is that the enlisted 
man shall salute first. I cannot salute until 
you have done so. Salute!" . . . And Bill 
did. 

Sensing that the strangeness of the men to 
military courtesies would make discontent un- 
less it was explained to them, the Captain 



32 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

called a meeting. He told them the story of 
the salute. 

"In olden days," he said, "a knight inva- 
riably kept on his helmet. Only when he was 
among friends would he remove it. That 
meant he was not afraid of getting his head 
split open with a battle-axe. From that, the 
raising of his hand to take off his helmet has 
come down to us — the bow of civilian life. The 
salute is the soldier's way of making a bow. 
Officers are forbidden to take off their hats to 
women; they salute instead. That is the 
Army's way of doing it. So you see there is 
nothing subservient, nothing degrading in the 
salute ; it is merely common politeness. If you 
weren't polite in civilian life, you will be polite 
here, and you will be so much the better men 
for it. And don't forget one thing: In the 
old days, only free men in an army were al- 
lowed to raise their hands ; the slaves were not. 
A prisoner in the United States Army is for- 
bidden to salute." 

That made it easier for Bill Hawkins and 
his comrades. The salute was not an invasion 
upon their rights as free-born American citi- 
zens. One could go on and tell of other things 
that Bill caught on to quickly. He began to 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 33 

like the life. The comradeship began to be 
pleasant. There was a relief from financial 
responsibility. He was fed, he was clothed, he 
was housed, the services of a doctor were at 
any time free. He got $30 a month and a 
promise of more if he was made a non-commis- 
sioned officer. He made up his mind to be a 
Sergeant. He paid attention to everything, 
asked questions and, when he got a chance, he 
studied in the military text-book that had been 
issued to him. 

As the days wore on he began to get an idea 
that there was something to the army far more 
interesting than mere mechanical drill. He 
began to slash the air with signal flags, to send 
and read messages at Army speed. He began 
to get an idea of the Field Guns, of the enor- 
mous power they were capable of developing 
and of the uncanny scientific accuracy with 
which their shells can be dropped miles away. 
He began to love the guns. That day he be- 
came an Artilleryman. . . . 

It has been my rare fortune to be able to 
hear the opinion of the highest officers of our 
Division on the new men of the National Army 
and of the Captains and Lieutenants who are 
commanding them — the men from the Officers' 



34 3UR FIRST HALF MILLION 

Training Camps of last summer. The men 
whom I heard speak are West Point gradu- 
ates, picked men of the Army; one a General, 
the other a wizard of our General Staff, vet-' 
erans of war in Cuba, the Philippines, Mexico ; 
men whose business it has been to know pre- 
cisely what has gone on in Europe since his- 
tory repeated itself and Germanic tribes swept 
down from the north. 

They were of the opinion that the officers 
from the Reserve Corps were highly efficient 
and that .the calibre of the men called into the 
ranks of the National Army being above the 
average of the Regular Army recruit, this 
new National Army would be the best this 
country ever had. 

What we did with our 190-odd rookies other 
officers have done. We sensed the caliber of 
these men; we saw that their spirit was right, 
that they were ready to play the game. They 
didn't like war. We Americans don't like 
war; we like peace. But so long as war has 
been forced upon us, so long as the Hohenzol- 
lerns have endangered our liberty as a nation, 
why, the men of the draft were ready. 

It was put up to them, one night after they 
came to us ; they could work out their own sal- 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 35 

vation and be happy in the job, or they could 
have it forced upon them and be unhappy. I 
repeat, they were not conscripts ; they did not 
come here as conscripts. They came with their 
heads high and ready to look you straight in 
the eye, so. of course they worked out theii" own 
salvation. Their spirit is stirring. The little 
things count. Against our desire we were com- 
pelled to make my first quota of men do the 
work of furniture movers, scrub women and 
scullions for two solid afternoons. The bar- 
racks had to be cleansed and put in shape for 
a new quota of the draft. But not a man 
grumbled. When they had worked for three 
hours steady, some' of them came up to me and 
asked if there wasn't something else they could 
do. Ask the woman how much the average 
man likes to* do housework. These rookies took 
it as being "all in the game." 

Will they make good soldiers ? Wait a few 
months; wait until the horses come and the 
guns and caisons go rolling down the road. A 
healthy life, the last yearnings for civilian hab^ 
its worn aw.ay; regular hours,, finely trained 
bodies, on horseback, that exhilarating sensa- 
tion, with eyes unconsciously sweeping the ho- 
rizon. The Battery guidon, a red and gold 



36 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

pennon snapping in the wind. Will they have 
pride in it? Does Young America have pride 
in its college flag? Intensify that and you will 
get an idea of the way this army will feel. 

Is it in the American to fight? Have they 
the stuff that makes a first-class fighting man ? 
Can a country of civilians turn out an army to 
cope with the Kaiser's war machine that was 
forty years building? Yes, to everything. We 
commanders know. We are here working with 
these men ; we know the stuff, and w^ ktiow the 
spirit. 

Sudden orders, a departure more silent and 
secret than Arabs ever made ; an embarking, a 
stealing out into the ocean with lights doused; 
a wonderful feeling of security that American 
Jackies somewhere out in the night are swoop- 
ing round and round, the foam flying from de- 
stroyer prows, holding the pirates of Tirpitz 
at bay. And then of a morning, sunny France ; 
"Lafayette, we are here." 



CHAPTER II 



"making men" 



In one of those wooden barracks which is 
housing a Division of the new National Army 
a recruit was holding forth. 

"I'll tell you men something: I had a 
brother. When the war broke out he skipped 
over to Canada and joined. He is over in 
France now — buried. I owe the Germans 
something for that. But that isn't why I came 
down here. Bill, my brother, never lied. The 
letters he wrote home from the front — well, 
the Huns are brutes. The whole German race 
is crazy. It's a mad dog loose in the world. 
I'm here and you're here to shoot it or catch it. 
And let me tell you fellows that I didn't have 
to come down. I was exempt, but I went to 
them and told them I wanted to come." 

That was spoken in an infantry regiment at 
Camp Dix. It has happened in every canton- 
ment where the First Half Million is getting 



88 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

ready for Europe. There comes to mind an- 
other case. The beginning was early in Au- 
gust at one of the Reserve Officers' Training 
Camps. A candidate for an artillery commis- 
sion was called in front of his instructor. The 
axe was falling; men were being eliminated. 
The candidate was told he had not made good 
and that he would ngt be commissioned. He 
replied : 

"All right. You don't think I have the stuff 
in me. I'll prove to you I have. I'm going 
down now and enlist in the National Army. 
I don't want a recommendation for a Ser- 
geant's job. I don't want anything." 

That man, a son of a well-to-do family, high 
bred, a Yale graduate, voluntarily went down 
as a private. He made good incredibly fast. 
Hi^ act was the making of him. A too casual 
air had rightly deprived him of his commission. 
It has been replaced by one of grim sternness 
of purpose. I thought, "He will get his com- 
mission before this war is over." . . . He had 
not been at Camp Dix three months when he 
was given a chance to earn it. Would he care 
to try for it in a flying school? Of course. To- 
day he is in Texas at a school for flying offi- 
cers. . . . Blood will tell. 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 39 

What are our new Reserve Officers doing 
with the thousands of young American lives 
that have been entrusted to them? They are 
working first to develop an army that will 
cleanse the world of Hohenzollern slime. To 
do this, they are striving to make efficient sol- 
diers, and that is dependent upon better man- 
hood, morally and physically. Their goal is 
to return the men of the National Army to 
their homes better in every way than when 
they left them. How is this being done? 

What is happening at our cantonment is 
happening in every National Army canton- 
ment throughout the United States. In the 
first place, we're getting the right man for the 
right job. No square pegs in round holes. 
When the recruit comes down, he faces an of- 
ficer who has in front of him a card upon 
which is printed nearly every known occupa- 
tion and profession and upon which is space 
for all kinds of data concerning the recruit. 
This is a permanent record of the qualifica- 
tions that the recruit brings to the army from 
civil life. The cards, a half million of them, 
are then filed. If a Battery of Artillery needs, 
two horseshoers, the file is consulted by a Per- 
sonnel Officer. It is learned that an Infantry 



40 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

Company has two horseshoers. On the tables 
of organization it doesn't need them. The Ar- 
tillery Battery gets its two horseshoers. 

But putting the men in the right job doesn't 
stop there. Psychological tests are being con- 
ducted. Curiously enough, they are the out- 
growth of the psychological laboratory exper- 
iments of the late Prof. Hugo Munsterburg 
who, when he wasn't lecturing at Harvard, 
was apologizing for the atrocities of his fellow 
countrymen. Psychological laboratories are 
operating in the National Army cantonments. 
Already it has been determined that five per 
cent, of the drafted men have minds approach- 
ing genius and fitted to carry them to the top 
in any calling. Fifteen per cent, are above 
normal. Sixty per cent, are average — reliable 
American types alert and capable but without 
special talent. Fifteen per cent, are below 
normal, and five per cent, more are mental 
deficients. 

Thus we have complete information to put 
at the disposal of an Artillery and an Infantry 
Commander. The "laboratories" hand over to 
him information that the most painstaking 
work of observation would take months to get. 
From a report a Commander can now tell 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 41 

what men he can rely on in an emergency; 
what men will rattle ; those who will rise above 
a situation and meet a crisis ; those whose nerv- 
ous systems may snap under the strain of shell 
fire; those who are unreliable — indeed what 
not. Everything that science can do is being 
utilized to make this National Army efficient 
quickly. 

The first problem was to take the recruit 
and make a soldier out of him. What was a 
civilian's idea of a soldier? A drunk, a gam- 
bler, a roustabout to be barred when in uni- 
form from the best seats in our theaters, as 
often happened to our shame not five years 
ago. And the conception a good many of us 
had of a soldier that he was a good-for-nothing 
— that came because the misdeed of one man 
if he be in uniform will brand a thousand of his 
comrades with the stigma. No, a soldier isn't 
that. He is a member of the most honorable 
profession in the world. A good soldier is 
thoroughly conscientious and reliable. Trick- 
ery is not in his make-up. If it is, he sooner 
or later finds his way into a military prison. 

So we were handicapped by this conception 
that America had of the soldier. Many of the 
men who came down here thought they were 



42 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

going into a kind of prison. One can never 
forget a dreary, rainy daybreak that de- 
bouched them from special trains into the mud 
of the camp siding, blundering, bumping into 
one another, trying to form some kind of a 
line for roll call. It reminded one of a Rus- 
sian retreat. And then a month later those 
same men swinging past a Commanding Offi- 
cer on review 120 steps to the minute, perfect 
rhythm, improved poise of bodies, chins high. 
No more stoop-shouldered slouching around 
with eyes on the ground. Men who took care 
of their uniforms, kept them clean, had pride 
in themselves and their Battery. That trans- 
formation came in one month — even with the 
Socialists. 

A National Army Captain reclaimed a So- 
cialist. The Captain knew the man was a So- 
cialist. The men who came in the same draft 
quota with him said so. Military life was in- 
human. The war was schemed by Wall Street. 
He would rather die for an ideal than for none. 
He would face a firing squad — for Socialism. 
Like most of his kind, he came peacefully to 
camp, ate more than his share of the food, and 
drilled. Then came the Great Thought. 

The Socialist caused a telegram to be sent to 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 43 

himself. His father was dead; his sister was 
prostrated with grief. He showed the tele- 
gram to his Captain and asked for a furlough. 
The Captain knew the father's death to be 
camouflaged, but he at once granted the So- 
cialist's request, and asked : "Do you need any 
money?" 

The Socialist thought he had enough. The 
Captain became all kindness. 

"Better take this, old man," and he passed 
a twenty-dollar bill into the private's hand. 
Confused, the Socialist left the office. Had he 
not been told that military men were inhuman? 
Outside, he met a Lieutenant who was sorry 
to hear of the bereavement, and pressed more 
money upon him. The Socialist went to the 
railroad station ; but an hour later he was back 
in barracks. He tossed the Captain's twenty- 
dollar bill on the table. "Captain," he said, 
"I'm a liar. My father isn't dead. My sister 
isn't ill. I faked that telegram." 

"I knew you did," the Captain replied. "I 
wanted to try you out. I believed in you." 

That Socialist is to-day a good soldier. One 
could go on and recount endless incidents of 
men who have found their real selves in the 
National Army. The right stuff was in 



44. OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

Young America all the time. It was only 
choking and gasping beneath the selfishness of 
the life we had come to lead as a nation. War 
is a paradox. It destroys and it creates. It 
brings out the best or the worst in a man, ex- 
aggerating either quality. It does the same 
thing to the women of a warring country, mak- 
ing them wantons or saints. War is not all 
black; there is a good deal of white in it. 
There is a great deal of the beautiful in man, 
revealing itself in the cantonments of the Na- 
tional Army. 

The officers are playing fair with the men, 
and they are quick to respond to the same 
treatment. There were two college men who 
enlisted and who after a time applied for a 
furlough to visit their college town. The pass 
entitled them to forty-eight hours. At the end 
of that time they seiit a telegram to their Bat- 
tery Commander which read: "Nobody dead. 
Nobody dying. Nobody sick. Are having a 
fine time. Kindly extend pass privileges. 
Kindly advise by wire collect." The reply was 
a prepaid telegram extending their pass. 

The spirit suggested by this telegram is 
slowly making its way in the National Army. 
The men are getting to like their officers and 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 46 

the officers to like their men. The spirit of the 
relation between a French commander and his 
men seems unconsciously to have developed 
here. In France the commander is to his men 
"My Captain"; the men to the Captain are 
"Mes enfants" — great big men-children, often 
his superior physically and mentally, but still 
"^Mes enfants." That implies the Captain has 
them under his care. He is looking out for 
them. They will get the best food he can give 
them; the best clothing he can wheedle out of 
the Supply Officer; the most privileges con- 
sistent with military discipline he can allow 
them. And the men know this. They know 
that he does not regard them as mere machines, 
as "conscripts." Confound the first writer in 
this country who applied that word to the 
National Army! 

And the Reserve Officers are looking after 
the men under them in a practical way. For 
an hour every day the men are put through 
rigorous physical exercises. They are given 
talks on personal hygiene. 

And have you ever heard of a "moral pro- 
phylactic"? It is being administered to every 
soldier in the National Army. Venereal dis- 
ease impairs the fighting efficiency of an 



46 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

army and it ultimately impairs the man and 
womanhood of a nation. My intent is not a 
medical discussion, but enough holes have been 
shot in the Conspiracy of Silence, which for 
generations we were prone to wage against our 
children, to allow some light to come through. 
A man who has been sexually diseased affects 
his offspring or the children of his offspring. 
And in the majority of cases he injures his 
own health. When this war is done, healthy 
manhood will be too precious a thing for any 
of it to be wasted. 

To that end, a campaign of enlightenment 
is being carried on in the National Army 
camps. The Conspiracy of Silence is being 
broken. Moral prophylactics are being ad- 
ministered, and, should they fail, a soldier must 
take a physical prophylactic or be court mar- 
tialled. 

The part that the Y. M. C. A. is playing in 
developing the spirit of the new army is of 
great importance. It is dealing in practical 
religion. If there is one thing this war has 
done it has delivered a terrific blow at theology 
and has breathed big new life into religion. It 
has turned man's thoughts in a common chan- 
nel unimpeded in their flow toward God by the 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 47 

obstacles that creeds have barraged. The work; 
of the Y. M. C. A. in the cantonment sug- 
gests that. To be religious, one no longer has 
to be unhappy. On Sundays one may smile, 
one may even sing the songs of the day, one 
may even dance without being damned. Do 
you know what the Y, M. C. A. did of a Sun- 
day in a National Army cantonment? They 
put on Anna Held and sixteen Broadway 
show girls. Then the only Anna sang and the 
show girls went through the evolutions of the 
chorus. 

Picture that scene. A wooden Y. M. C. A, 
shack, distinguished from the other buildings 
of the camp by its coat of green paint. A 
little stage from which in the morning a noted 
clergyman had spoken to a "small but enthusi- 
astic audience." The afternoon at four o'clock 
Anna Held appeared the place was jammed. 
Soldiers had climbed up on the rafters and, 
after she had sung in her gay mood, she 
changed of a sudden. Her face changed, her 
expression too. There came into it the spir- 
itual. We hadn't known her any more than 
we had known France. She began to recite. 
It was a poem to the defenders of Yerdun. 
She spoke it in French. Not one man in 



48 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

twenty could understand it, but they followed 
her breathlessly — her face! And tears came 
into her eyes as she spoke of the French dead. 
One could have heard the faintest sound in 
that hall. One did hear a sound as if some- 
thing intangible moved. It was the thought of 
sacrifice. Our soldiers could not understand 
her words, but they could read her face. They 
could see that she was in anguish at the 
thought of the sacrifices her beloved France 
had made to keep the Hun at bay. And that 
which moved in the air, that which went out to 
her was an unspoken pledge from those sol- 
diers who were coming to help her land. The 
same sort of pledge which prompted one man 
to write home: "It is impossible for me to ex- 
press the feeling that is within me." That was 
some of the feeling unloosened in that shack. 
That was the very essence of religion — sac- 
rifice. 

The Y. M. C. A. has gone to grips in a fight 
with the army of vice. Now the forces of vice 
are often more dangerous than the enemies' 
bullets. They break down a man's moral fiber. 
iThey lead him to the lie, the fraud, the theft, 
sometimes to murder, and surely sooner or 
later to the hospital. All that is bad from a 




c 

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i2 0-1 



1^ "t; 






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OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 49 

military point of view and for the race. The 
Y. M. C. A. has tackled the problem, man 
fashion. What has attracted soldiers? Why 
is it they preferred to go to cities instead of to 
Y. M. C. A. buildings? Because they are en- 
tertained in the cities and bored by the "up- 
lift" entertainment. What bores them? Con- 
tinually being told how they must live if they 
would be saved. A soldier spends six days in 
the week continually being told how to do 
things. On the seventh he doesn't want to be 
told to do anything. That may not be theol- 
ogy, but it is human nature. 

With that fundamental, the Y. M. C. A. has 
set up counter attractions to the cities and their 
temptations. It is keeping the soldiers in 
camp, not by boring them with interminable 
sermons and the psalm-singing on Sunday. 
Rather it is putting on good shows. Anna 
Held, boxing bouts, motion pictures, clog 
dances. And they reach the soldier. He gets 
in the habit of coming to the Y. M. C. A., and 
there he unconsciously yields to its Christian 
influences instead of having them jammed 
down his throat. In other words, the Y. M. 
C. A.'s shacks are made attractive places for 
him to visit, and, once there, he is in an atmos- 



50 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

phere that is clean. He comes in contact with 
the Y. M. C. A. workers who he finds are 
not "Stiffs," "Mamma-boys," but who are good 
husky men, willing to put on the gloves with 
him, poke him one in the eye and take one in 
return, and not be ashamed of God. That is 
practical Christianity, That is the brand de- 
veloped by the British army at the front. That 
is the kind that is slowly going to make the 
National Army men better. 

The old barbaric gods of the Northland are 
amuck again in the world. Again the Teu- 
tonic tribes are swooping down, ravaging fair 
lands. They have done so throughout all 
known European history. Only now their 
greed and lust for conquest is vaster. They 
are looking beyond France, beyond England, 
across the sea to us. They have crushed Bel- 
gium, Servia, Russia, Boumania. It rests with 
us. France and England are holding them at 
bay, until we come — and we^re coming with 
men. 



CHAPTER III 



"the army laughs" 



Soldiers work hard, and they would play 
hard — if they could. They have their griev- 
ances and their laughs. They invariably 
grumble about their "mess," no matter how 
good it is. For that is expected of the old sol- 
dier, and in three months our National Army 
boys became quite experienced and blase. The 
civilian population could be wondering where 
it was going to buy a pound of sugar — when 
Hoover's conservation went into effect — ^but if 
Sammy of the National Army didn't get the 
regular Quartermaster allowance every morn- 
ing in his oatmeal and coffee there was a row. 
And it's surprising how quickly they caught 
on — ^just what the allowances were, just what 
they should receive for their ration if the Mess 
Sergeant was on the job. Also, no matter 
how efficient he may be, a Mess Sergeant is 

always a failure in the eyes of the men. 

51 



52 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

"He hands us hash and fries himself eggs, 
on the side — the burglar!" Often that is a 
morning salutation. Now to rise at six and to 
stand reveille in the cold is never pleasing to 
some, no matter how long they have been doing 
it. And so at breakfast the grouches bloom; 
and so with the bugles calling to morning drill, 
with the after-breakfast cigarettes mellowing 
the atmosphere, the gloom is ironed out and 
the laughs begin. For laughs there are in the 
National Army, whole rolling torrents of 
them. 

Paterson, New Jersey, sent the foreign-born 
from its silk mills to Camp Dix. See them 
standing one morning in the barrack yard of 
an artillery regiment. See that little Italian 
in the front rank, his chest stuck 'way out, his 
stomach too, in a sincere, if wrong, effort to 
stand as a soldier at attention. Now at the 
command, "Count off!" the men turn head and 
eyes to the right and each calls out his number 
as soon as the man next to him has spoken. 
Facing the Battery stood the Captain. 

"Count off!" he commanded. 

One after another the men sounded off: 
"One — two — three — four ! One — two — ^three 
- — four! One — two — three — four! Seex hurt- 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 5S 

dred twenf-niner The Captain's eyes picked 
up the offender — the little Italian with his 
chest and stomach bravely pushed out. 

"Count off!" the Captain ordered again, 
satisfying himself that the Italian had tried no 
"horsing." 

And again they sounded off : "One — two — 
three — four!" and so on until it came to the 
Italian, and then very earnestly ''Seeoo-hun- 
dred twenf-nme!" A man in the rear rank 
snickered. The Captain looked stern. He 
took a few steps toward the little Italian, who, 
like a statue, stood with his body so absurdly 
thrust forward. 

"Say, Recruit Mongelli," said the Captain, 
"what's wrong with you? You ought to know 
your number by now. What is it?" 

"Seeoo hundred twenf-niner exploded the 
Italian. The Captain hesitated, deliberating 
upon the guard house. A look of alarm en- 
tered the Italian's face. ''Mio Ca'pitaine" he 
said, eager to please. "You aska me mia num- 
ber, la tella you seex hundred twent'-nine^ 
For fiva year I work ina the silk factory. Mia 
nomero there alway seex hundred twent'- 
nine." The Captain threw up his hands. 

Now, just as in college or prep school, when 



54 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

a new boy comes there is fun at his expense, 
so did some of the Non-Commissioned officers 
sent by the Regular Army to help the Na- 
tional Army get going have their fun with the 
"rookies." And oddly enough there was a 
spirit in the National Army that was bigger. 
For when the second group of the draft came 
to cantonment the drafted men who had been 
there some months before them did all they 
could to help and make things pleasant for the 
newcomers. They showed them the ropes in- 
stead of tying them up in them. But not some 
of the Non-Commissioned from the Regulars; 
they had to have their bit of horse-play with 
the rookies. 

Now, as you know, reveille is the name of 
that accursed bugle call which turns a man 
out of a warm bed into a cold morning. 

One day there appeared before a veteran 
Sergeant on duty in the Regimental Supply 
Office a rookie, who asked: "Please, sir, give 
me some reveille oil." 

"Some what?" exploded the old Sergeant. 

"Reveille oil," repeated the recruit; and, 
eager to air some newly acquired wisdom, he 
went on: "It's an oil used to fix up a bugle 
so it'll blow all right on cold mornings." 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION rs 

The Sergeant bit on his lip. "Who told you 
that, sonny?" he asked. 

"Corporal McChiskey, sir," the rookie re- 
plied; "and he said that you didn't like to give 
out reveille oil, that it was so scarce, but for 
me to be sure and not to come back without it." 

"Hm," mused the old Sergeant. "Well, 
sonny, you go back to Corporal McChiskey 
and tell him that we're all out of reveille oil, 
but that we've got a hundred yards of skirmish 
line if he wants it." And "skirmish line," 
should you not know, is the "firing line." 

"Guess that'll fix McChiskey," growled the 
Sergeant, and went on with his work. 

Yes, the rookies had their little troubles at 
the start, and — bless them! — they gave the 
overworked officers many a silent laugh. They 
gave the Mustering Officers laughs. I know; 
I have been a Mustering Officer. 

Every soldier enrolled in a regiment must be 
quizzed by the Mustering Officer and his as- 
sistants, and a thousand confounded papers 
filled out for him. There is one document in 
particular that gives trouble. It is the card 
for the "Designation of Beneficiary." Upon 
that is recorded for the soldier the person he 
wishes notified and to receive any money that 



56 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

may be due from the Government in the event 
of the soldier's death. To a rookie one doesn't 
use the word "death." One tries to be more 
diplomatic. To a big Irish recruit a Muster- 
ing Officer said: "Now, whom do you wish 
to designate as your beneficiary?" 
"Me what?" 

"Your beneficiary. Now suppose," and the 
lieutenant went on patiently, although it was 
the four hundred and nineteenth man who 
had stood before him in a last sleepless twenty- 
four hours. "Now suppose anything were to 
happen to you. Suppose a wagon were to run 
over you, whom would you want to be no- 
tified?" 

"The priest— Father McMahon." 

"No," the Lieutenant explained; "not the 

priest, but — er " And throwing tact aside, 

he rushed to the point: "Suppose you were 
wounded — got hit with a bullet — see? Who 
would you want notified — some person who'd 
come first into your mind whom you'd want 
told?" 

"Oh, I get you now!" chuckled the Irish- 
man. "The doctor. Always notify the doc- 
tor." Uttering a low moan, the Lieutenant 
collapsed. 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 67 

And they wonder why Mustering Officers 
go mad? I've always suspected that Irishman. 

Not so long ago I mustered in a Battalion 
of a Negro regiment, all of them rookies of 
the draft. Their casual outlook upon life was 
delightful. 

"Recruit Perkins," I asked one, "are you 
married or single?" 

"Single, suh, but Ah's done mah duty, suh — 
three children, suh." 

There came another: "Recruit Pinckney. 
Married or single?" 

"Waal, Ah was married, boss, but mah wife 
she done went up and went over the hill with 
some no-'count coon." 

"Are you divorced?" I asked him. 

"No, boss, not exactly that ; but Ah'm mar- 
ried again; not exactly married — but Ah's 
mighty comfortable, boss — mighty comfort- 
able." 

Their emotions are as transient as children's, 
the lesser educated of our Negro soldiers, while 
their comrades who have gone to the public 
schools and higher are extremely dignified, 
filled with ambition, reliable, wholly trust- 
worthy, and eager to do their part for Amer- 
ica. One records these qualities for the sur- 



68 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

face judgment of a Negro regiment is often 
grossly unfair. Popularly it is supposed to be 
a gathering of likable but wholly irresponsible 
children of the Southland, who invariably 
spend their time off drill with craps, clog 
dancing, wild women, and razors. That's a 
libel, for I know in my own Battery there were 
more men studying how to become Non-Com- 
missioned officers than there were men for 
whom life was one long "moon an' rag." 

But they made the fun, and as fun it is re- 
corded. One of our men had in civilian life 
been a Pullman porter. Well, anything that 
comes to a Pullman porter belongs to him. 
When the porter was told that his services 
would be more valuable to the nation in the 
army than brushing the life out of passengers' 
coats, to Camp Dix he went. His wife stayed 
home. Also, being a Pullman porter, he left 
stacks of money in the bank. He wrote his 
wife to draw some of this money and come 
down to visit him at camp. He'd meet her at 
Trenton early Saturday afternoon, and they'd 
do the Jersey capital until Sunday evening, 
when his pass would be up and he'd have to re- 
turn to camp. 

His newly acquired chum in the battery was 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 69 

a tall, handsome young Negro, called "Buck." 
"Buck" had only thrown trunks around for the 
railroad, not passengers' clothing, so Buck 
didn't begin to have the Pullman porter's roll. 
Woe of woes on the morning of the Saturday 
when the porter's wife was to come! For he 
was taken sick and sent to the Regimental In- 
firmary. 

"Grippe," pronounced our Medical Cap- 
tain. "You will remain here in bed." 

What was the poor fellow to do? His wife 
coming all the way from Wilmington and he 
not at Trenton to meet her! He had an in- 
spiration. He sent for his new chum, "Buck." 
He asked Buck, as a great favor, to spend his 
Saturday half -holiday going over to Trenton 
to meet the wife. Buck demurred until, lured 
by the thoughts of a twenty-mile drive in a 
"jitney" to Trenton and back to camp — which 
the helpless porter agreed to pay for. On 
Saturday, promptly at 12:15, Buck, after be- 
ing inspected by an officer, who verified he was 
properly uniformed, left the barracks for 
Trenton. 

Three o'clock no word from Buck. Four 
o'clock and the Pullman porter began to get 
worried. Six o'clock, no word — not even a 



60 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

telephone message. Nine o'clock that night 
and the porter was for leaping out of the in- 
firmary bed. Ten o'clock and, calling for 
an attendant, he dashed off a telegram and 
begged him to send it off for him. With a 
grin the attendant — before drafted having 
been a bellhop — ^held him up for a dollar and 
read the telegram as he left the room. It was 
to the porter's father-in-law. It said: 

'^Advise me immediately of the where- 
abouts of your daughter f^ 

The next day no word — nor the next. To 
make matters worse, the porter had been sent 
back to his barracks, and his "bunkies," who 
were now on to the happenings, consoled him 
— thus delicately. "Yo' ought t' have known 
better dan t' let yo' wife meet Buck. Look 
out for dem big black babies !" 

On Tuesday night the wandering Buck re- 
turned. He went straight to the hospital, 
complaining of a pain in the stomach and 
"aphasia." 

"Honest t' Gawd, doctor," pleaded Buck, 
"that fool nigger'll kill me if Ah goes to th' 
barracks. Ah didn't even see his wife. Ah 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 61 

goes t' Trenton an' Ah gets aphasia, s'^me- 
thin' awful, doctor — yes, sir, awful !" . . . And 
the Pullman porter to this day doesn't know 
whether to believe his wife or not, who we 
heard wrote him that she had changed her 
mind and stayed in Wilmington. . . . Now 
w^ith white troops that would probably have 
meant a big row, but all it produced was: 
"Look out fo' Buck. He's one of dem big 
black babies." 

But to be fair to our men, not forgetting 
that this little affaire de cceur had for its chief 
actors two of our worst and most ignorant 
men, one recalls a white soldier who got just as 
hard a shock as the Pullman porter must have 
had. 

For days Private Runney had been bother- 
ing his Captain. "Have I the Captain's per- 
mission to speak to the Colonel?" Private 
Runney declined to tell the Captain why he 
wanted to see the Colonel, but insisted that it 
was something of grave importance. Finally 
to get rid of him — for the man had become a 
nuisance, hovering in the vicinity of an orderly 
room whenever he was off duty — the Captain 
took him in to see the Colonel. Private Run- 
ney very mysteriously sidled up to the Colonel. 



62 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

"Last Tuesday night, sir," the private said, 
"the Lord spoke to me. He told me that I 
should not di'ill." 

"What time was this?" asked the Colonel. 

"It was about midnight, sir, when I heard 
the Lord's voice forbidding me to drill." 

"Don't worry, Private Runney," said the 
Colonel, perfectly seriously. "I was talking to 
the Lord about you, two hours after he spoke 
to you. And the Lord told me that I was to 
drill you hard, because your mind is on some- 
thing else. So, Saturday afternoon. Private 
Runney^ drill. The Lord's will, not ours, be 
done." . . . 

It is while he is on duty as a sentry that the 
rookie makes the fun. I recall a Captain of 
Infantry, himself no conventional character, 
now no longer in the service, so he may be 
noted. Assigned to one of the National Army 
camps the man who in civil life had been a 
brilliant lawyer early made a reputation as an 
eccentric. Invited to a dinner in a pretentious 
house near the cantonment, he made a sensa- 
tion, when the hostess, never dreaming that she 
would be taken up, told her officer guests, as 
a joke, that they might take anything out of 
her house that appealed to them for furnish- 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 6S 

ing their rooms at camp. What she was doing 
was having a quiet little joke, comparing her 
guests to the staff of His Imperial Highness, 
Friedrich Wilhelm of Prussia who, upon 
lunching in a French chateau, appropriated 
after coffee all the silverware. All got the 
point, except this Captain, who had been a 
lawyer, and he, taking his hostess seriously, 
made a minute examination of all the effects 
of the house and then quite gravely informed 
her: 

"Madame, Captain X accepts your 

kind offer and will take the bowl of goldfish 
in your sun parlor for his room." 

His hostess was shocked but game, and the 
next day delivered up the bowl of goldfish that 
the Captain's orderly promptly called for. 
Yes, I said, he had been a lawyer. That be- 
gan the Captain's reputation for doing the un- 
expected. He enhanced it the day sixty-odd 
new recruits were assigned to his company. 
Lining them up, he said : 

"I suppose all you men have brought your 
goldfish to camp with you. Any goldfish food 
that you have left over after feeding your pets, 
bring into the orderly room for our fish there. 
. . . Dismissed." The recruits stared at each 



64. OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

other blankly as they plodded into barracks. 
"Nut," some one said. 

There was a shortage of rifles then — it was 
in September. The Captain who may have 
been a good lawyer sent to a near-by city for 
two gross of baseball bats. He would only 
have the best "Louisville Sluggers/' over a 
hundred dollars' worth. And he began to 
teach his company the Manual of Arms with 
baseball bats for rifles. One day he lectured 
to them on "Guard Duty." 

"I'm going to post a guard of three privates 
and two Corporals to-night/' he explained, "in 
the empty barracks. You will be armed with 
baseball bats. If any one attempts to enter 
that building without authority, I want you to 
beat them up — remember that, beat them up — 
no matter who they say they are ; no matter if 

they say they're me — Captain X himself. 

I want you men to get trained in the idea that 
as sentry you're boss; that you cannot be 
trifled with." 

So far so good. But that night Captain 

X had a Big Idea. In his room he slyly 

stripped off all insignia of his rank. He took 
the ofiicer's cord from his hat. He slipped on 
a raincoat, which bears no stripings of rank. 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 65 

He took off his puttees and sent over to the 
supply office for a pair of soldier's canvas leg- 
gings. Thus altered, he set out at midnight. 
He would catch his guard asleep and give 
them the devil. Cautiously stalking about the 
empty barracks, seeing no sign of a sentry, he 
slid along the outer wall and gently pushed 
open a window. 

"Wonder what that damned fool's up to," 
thought the sentry. 

By George, the fellow had opened the win- 
dow ! He was trying to get in ! 

"Corporal of the Guard!" shouted the 
sentry. 

In vain had the Captain tried to spring over 
the high window ledge into the room. There 
he hung, head and shoulders inside the room, 
legs dangling outside. A baseball bat rang 
against his pants. The sentry was obeying his 
orders. 

"Ouch!" cried Captain X . Down 

crashed the bat again. "Stop it, you idiot! 
I'm Captain X ." 

"That's all bunk!" cried the sentry. "Our 
Captain warned us against stalls like that!" 
And away he clouted at the Captain's pants. 
The Corporal came up with his guard, and 



66 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

they all belabored him, with the Captain now 
shouting: "That's the way, men. That's be- 
ing on the job — ouch! — you're right, men, 
. . . Damn! . . . That's the way to be sen- 
tries. . . . Hell's bells I . . . Fine, men !'*... 
The next day a board of alienists sat on the 

case of Captain X and he was retired to 

civil life. 

These ferocious sentries have a way of 
boomeranging. There was one Brigadier Gen- 
eral at Camp Ayer who had a reputation for 
sentries throughout all that New England Di- 
vision. His sentries challenged anybody and 
anything after taps; stopped motor cars, even 
if they were labelled all over with U. S.; 
stopped officers going from one barrack to an- 
other; made themselves just as lordly as sen- 
tries can be. One day the General himself was 
making the rounds. As he approached a sen- 
try on Post 4, the sentry failed to salute. 

"Don't you know that I'm an officer?" cau- 
tioned the General. 

Coolly the rookie looked over the General, 
and then replied icily: "I'm not acquainted 
with you." 

Really, these days the life of a General is 
sometimes hard. I know of one in a Southern 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 67 

camp — one dares not breathe his name — who 
got the shock of his life from a National 
Army rookie, of the Quartermaster Corps, 
too! The trouble was all due to the color of 
the hat cord. The Quartermaster Corps — or 
Q. M., as they are known — wear a hat cord 
of a yellowish shade, disconcertingly akin to a 
General's. Also, the Q. M. not being the 
line," one is apt to find both officers and men 
of quite generous girth among the Q. M.'s. 
There was one such, a rookie. For a week 
Fatty had mistaken every Q. M. hat cord for a 
General's, and he was saluting his arm off. 

"This camp is full of Generals," he com- 
plained one night to a "bunkie"; so his new- 
found chum tipped him off 

"You've been saluting nothing but privates, 
like yourself." 

"The hell I have!" Fatty roared indig- 
nantly. 

"Sure; the Q.M. hat cord looks just like a 
General's." 

"Huh," grunted Fatty, vowing to lay for 
the next Q.M. private who tried to put it over 
on him. A few days later a pleasantly plump 
man in his fifties wearing a golden hat cord 



68 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

sauntered down by the Quartermaster sheds, 
casually looking them over. 

"See here. Private," admonished the stran- 
ger, stepping in front of Fatty. "Don't you 
know enough to salute when you see me?" 

"You bet I do, you old lollop!" snorted 
Fatty. "You don't fool me on any of that 
stuff any more. I'm wise. See?" and deri- 
sively he wriggled his fingers against his nose. 
Aghast, the stranger contemplated him. 

"Don't you know who I am?" 

"You bet I know," chuckled Fatty; "you're 
one of those Quartermaster birds that wears a 
hat cord somethin' like a General's and tries to 
pose as a General to pull down salutes. Beat 
it. I'm busy with these beans." 

Two hours later Fatty received an impera- 
tive summons to report in the Aides' Office at 
Division Headquarters. There he was met by 
a grieved-looking young officer who led him 
into the presence of "the big lollop." 

"My Gawd," mumbled Fatty, "it is the 
General!" 

"Take a good look at me too, young man, so 
you'll know me," roared the General. "The 
next time you'll get only one look." And 
Fatty looked. 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 69 

Did you ever handle a Colt automatic pistol, 
one of the Army "forty-fives"? If you have, 
you respect it. The rookie, likewise, is un- 
aware that it is one of the most dangerous 
weapons unskilled hands can carry. In the 
grip of the greenhorn it has a way of acciden- 
tally going off. The first week the camp 
guard was posted in one of the Eastern can- 
tonments, the rookies were given Colt auto- 
matics. Rough characters existed among the 
laborers who were still working on the can- 
tonment, and it was not thought wise to leave 
out the sentries unarmed. So they were in- 
structed : 

"Load your clips with two blank cartridges 
at the top. Put five ball cartridges under 
them. Thus if you get into such trouble that 
you'll have to use your pistol you can fire twice 
right at the man with two blanks. If that 
doesn't scare him off and he's assaulting you, 
you've got the ball cartridges to fall back 
upon." 

Now one day when that guard was on, a 
friend of mine was Officer of the Day. The 
officer acting as such is responsible for all the 
sentries, and must inspect them on post fre- 
quently. He made his first inspecting round 



70 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

at night. "Halt!" he heard a sentry shout. 
"Who's there?" 

"Friend!" 

"Advance, friend. . . . Halt!" . . . Bang! 

And my friend, the Lieutenant, got his first 
sensation of being under fire. Something sped 
by, sucking in the air with a whistling sound — 
a bullet! Like a flash he dropped to the 
^ound. Bang! A second bullet whistled 
overhead. Bang! No sound of a bullet. 

"The damned fool!" swore the Lieutenant, 
softly. "He loaded two ball cartridges first 
instead of two blanks." And sure enough, 
when the sentry had calmed down, the Lieu- 
tenant found this to be so. 

"I didn't fire," the sentry explained; "the 
pistol just started firing somehow and ran 
away with me." 

"All right," said the Lieutenant grimly; 
and two hours later he made a second swing 
round the posts. This time the sentries were 
amazed to hear their Lieutenant calling to 
them out of the night: 

"Hello! Here I come! Hello! This is the 
Officer of the Day coming! Don't shoot!" 
. . . Which was quite novel for the night in- 
spection of sentries but grim military neces- 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 71 

sity, with Colt automatics in the hands of 
rookies. That time the National Army had 
the laugh on an officer. 

There are not a few laughs on officers. 
There was a Major of a Depot Brigade, which 
is a reservoir of troops to replace losses in a 
fighting division. Not so very long ago the 
Major had been a Lieutenant in the Regular 
Army and commissioned higher ; he was rising 
to every situation. There was one situation, 
however, that floored him cold. Broken down 
by the day-and-night work of those early days 
of the National Army, he was taken to the hos- 
pital. His Captains and Lieutenants thought 
it would be decent to send him some flowers, 
and they did. Later, when the Major was re- 
turned from the hospital for duty, his first act 
was to storm into the office of the Battalion 
Adjutant. 

"Do you know anything about any flowers 
being sent down to the hospital for me?" he 
demanded of the Captain. 

"Why, yes. Major." 

"Out with it! Who did it?" 

"Why, we all did. Major. The officers got 
together " 

"And sent me a damned funeral wreath!" 



72 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

snapped the Major. "But I fooled you all." 

Nothing would satisfy the Major that it 
hadn't been done deliberately until he investi- 
gated for himself and learned that the florist 
had made the mistake of confusing the order 
for the hospital with one for a maiden lady of 
the neighborhood. It was this same Major 
who, hovering around while a company was 
being paid, upbraided an Irish boy for not say- 
ing "Here!" distinctly when his name was 
called. 

"Now, Private Hallorahan," directed the 
Major, injecting himself into the situation to 
the annoyance of the Private's Captain, "say 
*Here !' as if you meant it." 

Hallorahan mumbled something. 

"What!" exclaimed the Major. "Can't you 
say 'Here!' plainly and loudly?" 

"Faith and I can't," the Irish boy replied. 
"I ain't got no upper teeth." Every officer 
was careful to look in another direction from 
the Major. 

There was a joke pinned upon the Medical 
Officers of one regiment that they have yet to 
hear the end of. For weeks these doctors had 
been urging the Captains to preach Personal 
Hygiene and Sanitation to their men. Regu- 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 73 

larly every fortnight the doctors would then 
visit barracks, assembling the men in the mess 
hall — "where the light was good" — and exam- 
ine them for "cooties" and the need of baths. 
That went on for several weeks. Then one 
night the privates of Battery E were allowed 
to give a "smoker." Monologues, songs, and 
all were on the bill. All the officers of the 
regiment were there; the Medical Officers 
early made their presence apparent by peeping 
under the tables for crumbs, even though it 
was "smoker night." A minstrel show was on, 
the rookies blackened up. 

"What, Mr. Bones, is the Medical Depart- 
ment's idea of sanitation?" 

"Give up, Mr. Interlocutor." 

"Why, Mr. Bones, the Medical Depart- 
ment's idea of sanitation is 'cootie' inspection 
in the mess hall." 

Wow ! The Medical Officers glared, but the 
Colonel laughed. The next day at Officer's 
Call, though, no one noticed that the Colonel 
was laughing; particularly the Medical Offi- 
cers noted that fact. And they ceased to turn 
the men's dining hall into a clinic. 

There is in one National Army cantonment 
where the Negro soldiers are housed, a mysteri- 



'74 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

ous organization. Every Tuesday and Friday 
its members, soldiers of one of the colored reg- 
iments, march through the camp forty-eight 
strong. Nobody knows where they go, only 
the regimental officers know. At first they 
used to slouch down, as if they had been 
caught at something and were going for pun- 
ishment. Then the Regimental Surgeon him- 
self, an old National Guard Infantry Captain, 
took hold of them. Now they go marching 
down through the camp in column of squads, 
heads up and singing like larks "Ifs a long 
lane that has no turning/' They form the 
*'club," The Mysterious Forty-Eight, who go 
regularly to the Base Hospital for treatment, 
but who, to see them, you'd think were kings 
of the road. And had white troops their dis- 
ease they'd shuffle by, their eyes on the ground, 
detesting themselves and the world; but not 
our "club," which knows little more of disease 
than a child, and so struts and sings. For there 
are just enough of the go-lucky boys with the 
colored troops to make a splendid leaven. 
Their childishness, their spontaneity, their 
eagerness to break into song, relieve well the 
studious, set application of their more ambi- 
tious comrades. When we organized the regi- 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 75 

ment, the first of its kind in American history, 
an artillery regiment of Negro soldiers, we told 
them briefly about artillery. 

"You men," we said, "are lords of the road. 
You know the infantry. They walk. They're 
the doughboys. You don't walk. You ride. 
You're artillery." 

"Capt'n; please, Capt'n," a voice called 
eagerly, "we have horses?" 

"Yes; a hundred and sixty-six in one bat- 
tery." 

"Yo' all hear that? We folks have horses. 
Glory be ! I love 'em, Capt'n." 

"Yes, and you don't carry rifles," went on 
the Captain. "You have big Colt automatic 
pistols strapped to your belts." 

"La! Oh, Lordy! Dat certainly am fine, 
Capt'n. All these yere niggers can leave their 
razors home now. Pistols ? Th' Lawd am cer- 
tainly good." 

And the eyes then of many of them seemed 
just all white. 

Shoes spick and span, uniforms neat and 
clean, slick and natty—that's the Negro soldier. 
He's there. He'll write his reputation big in 
France. He's working like a fiend. He has a 
big pride in his Division — the Ninety-second, 



76 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

composed entirely of Negro soldiers. Listen to 
that big buck Corporal there. 

"Listen now, all yo' men," he is saying to his 
squad. "Yo' all see mah chevrons y'ere," and 
he taps the Corporal's stripes on his sleeve. 
"Yo' men gotta know what them chevrons 
mean. Dey mean Ah was picked by the Pres- 
ident to be a Corp'ral in his army. Dat the 
whole power" — expressively gesturing — "of 
the United States am now behind me when Ah 
says to yo' all. Left — F-hacer And they 
face. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE SPIRIT OF OUR MEN 

We love peace, yet we have produced some 
of the most brilliant Generals of history. It 
has ever been a way with us to keep the arts of 
war in the background and to bring peaceful 
pursuits to the fore. Yet, in the art of war we 
have excelled. Our cavalry tactics developed 
by the Civil War became the fundamentals of 
the cavalry training of every great European 
power. Our navy was the first to develop the 
"smoke screen" cast up by destroyers to hide 
a fleet. Yes, we love peace; we love our lib- 
erty. We have loved it so much throughout 
our entire history that we have always been 
willing to fight for it. It is a way with us to 
be peaceful, to want to remain friends with the 
world. It is also a way with us, that when the 
world has not let us be friends, we have be- 
come very dangerous enemies. So it is now. 
So are we rushing preparations for this war. 



78 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

It is like us that we should do it on an 
unheard-of scale. The preparation for war 
that is going on in our country to-day is colos- 
sal. We must pause to weigh these things if 
we would understand the National Armv. 

With one sweep of the pen President Wil- 
son accomplished what England and Canada 
muddled over, hesitated about, and finally ac- 
cepted — what Australia has yet to accept after 
two years of wrangling. We had but to recog- 
nize the condition of war that Germany forced 
upon us when we plunged, in a typically 
American way, and did the one thing the Brit- 
ish cabinets had feared to tackle — compulsory 
military service! Uncle Sam pushed his boot 
in the face of Old Man Tradition. 

One can remember last spring, fateful April 
6th— "War!" Then a "business man" said to 
me : "It won't be a real war ; we are only bluff- 
ing. Fellows are not going to give up good 
jobs to join the army." Not one, but hun- 
dreds of thousands said that — at first. Money 
was put in the scales against the nation, and 
money won. In their minds, compulsory mili- 
tary service was not even dreamed of. 

Said, too, a learned professor: "The effect 
of our educational system has been anything 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 79 

but to prepare the American mind for com- 
pulsory military service. The American to- 
day will not accept it. If you attempt it, you 
will have draft riots worse than the Civil War. 
If you do get an army that way, it will be a 
chain gang." 

And said a Naval Officer, who was just 
about to leave port in command of an armed 
merchantman — war had not been declared; it 
was in February: "I don't mind going over," 
he said. "The fact that we probably will be 
attacked by a submarine is all in the game. 
The risk is part of my profession. That isn't 
why I'm feeling blue. What I am thinking 
about is that we officers and seamen can be 
drowned protecting the American flag, others 
can be drowned, and it will be meaningless to 
most of the people back home. That's what 
hurts." 

Now, none of the three men I have quoted, 
who expressed his opinion just at the time our 
war was gathering, completely knew his coun- 
try. Would you know our country and its 
soul to-day? Leave the theater, the picture 
plays, the "uplift work" behind you. Sweep 
past the flutterings of surface emotion and 
come down to a National Army cantonment. 



80 pUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

Seep into the soul of the National Army. 
There you will find America. You will find 
an America that some of us did not know ex- 
isted — those of us in the younger generation. 
You will find that your country is not really 
made up of sectional selfishness, of small-town 
gossip, of big-city coldness, of cloak-and-suit- 
company humor, and of unfaithful wives and 
abducted virgins. You will find instead that 
the soul of America — and in its army, you find 
the naked soul — is vast. 

You will think perhaps, as you reflect upon 
the spirit of the National Army, that our 
country came into being because of glorious 
Odysseys. You reflect that America was born 
in the minds of men who wanted liberty — ^lib- 
erty for religion; freedom from unjust taxa- 
tion, from hopeless debt, and from persecution. 
You will think that our country's founders 
embarked on a Great Adventure, sailed the 
seas in miserable wooden boats, planted foot 
on a savage continent, hacked out homes, 
formed a nation, and fought war after war to 
retain it. And, as you observe, in the National 
Army, a foreign face under our campaign hat, 
your mind may go back to a vast Russian 
plain, to a wretched village where in a hovel 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 81 

in the shadow of a monstrous gold- domed 
church a peasant — that recruit's father — 
hoarded his Httle savings for years until that 
day when he had enough to buy a ticket for 
America — to Liberty! Or you may think of 
an oppressed tenantry of the Balkans, of the 
downtrodden of Europe saving and saving, 
traveling on foot leagues of miles to gain the 
steamer — America — Liberty! And it may 
come to you that the spirit, the spark, which 
made these people of the past do those things, 
turn a wilderness into a nation or make untold 
sacrifices so as to become a part of our nation, 
it may come to you then that some of their 
soul has been transmitted to their sons. For 
their sons to-day are America. That which 
they and their parents fought so hard to gain 
is in danger. Slowly it has dawned upon us 
that we are in a war for our liberty and swiftly 
we are to fight to preserve it. 

The French people of to-day, they are not 
warlike — like ourselves. Before the war clouds 
broke in 1914 they wanted peace. Like us,, 
they had war forced upon them. They did not 
meet it as a nation, with laughter and joy — 
any more than we have. Most of the world 
could not grasp the soul of France at war. 



82 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

That was because it did not know France; it 
knew Paris. How did it know Paris ? Friends 
with money brought home stories. Unfaithful 
reproductions of French life were to be seen in 
any theater. It did not know France any more 
than it knows America. Germany looked at 
the worst in New York, at its obvious things, 
its extravagance, commercialism, and greed, 
and said; "Ah, that is America! It will not 
fight. It is base." And just as France 
amazed the world, so will we. 

Indeed, the more one contemplates the 
spirit of the National Army, the more one is 
convinced that it is quite like the French. 
America dancing off to war — "The ragtime 
soldier man." Rubbish! The American 
armies, tangoing off to war in a thoughtless, 
care-free manner. Fiddlesticks! The Na- 
tional Army is serious. It is dignified. It has 
taken the war with a philosophy quite like the 
French. It may be expressed something like 
this : "We do not like war. We believe it in- 
tolerable. We hope peace comes. But what 
good is peace if it does not retain us our coun- 
try? And w^hat good is life if we have not our 
country? Everything we have, everything 
we love, spring from that. We will fight 




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OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 83 

for it to the end. America must be pre- 
served." 

As the French soldier-writer, Paul Lintier, 
has so beautifully put it: 

"One must have fought, have suffered, and 
have feared — even if only for a moment — to 
lose her, in order to understand what one's 
country really means. She is the whole joy of 
existence, the embodiment of all our pleasures, 
visible and invisible, and the focus of all our 
hopes. In defending her one defends one's 
self, seeing that she is the sole reason for be- 
ing, for living. Every soldier feels this truth, 
either vaguely or distinctly or clearly, accord- 
ing to his own powers of perception and af- 
fection." 

The man who thinks that way is the serious- 
thinking fighter. He is much more dangerous 
than the braggart, than the man who says he 
* loves war." The German Crown Prince said 
he loved war. When his offensive was turning 
Verdun into a slaughter-house he was carried 
to bed — so the story goes — dead drunk, feebly 
shouting: "On to Verdun! On to Paris!" 
And the men who stopped him, stopped his de- 
luded fools of soldiers, rather, were serious- 
minded Frenchmen who hated war and who 



84 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

simply said: "They have not passed. They 
shall not pass!" 

Now that, too, is the mood of the National 
Army. It is a stoical determination to see the 
thing through. They have entered this war 
after reading of it for three years. They know 
its horrors. In this they are unlike the men of 
any nation whom circumstances rushed into 
war, as into an Unknown Adventure. Our 
men know this war; they followed it in the 
press since its outbreak. They are going in, 
dogged and grim; theirs is a cold courage — 
which is the most sublime. Give me that type 
of soldier to the one of loud mouth! 

Come into a Company office in one of our 
National Army cantonments of an evening 
after "Retreat." A call had gone out for vol- 
unteers for early service in France. Perhaps 
you visualize the type that responded — boy- 
ish, eager, seeking an adventure. Not one! 
Instead, they were serious-minded men. As 
one of them said: "I feel I can be of more use 
in France now than here." (The call was for 
special technical work. ) ^'I want to go where 
I can he of the most use" That is the very 
essence of the spirit of service for America. 

To be sure, there is the other type in the 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 85 

National Army; the type which has a craving 
for new faces, new lands, the man who, had 
circumstances permitted, would by now have 
been from one end of the United States to the 
other and to Europe and back — the voyageur, 
the rolling stone. There was one such who 
applied to go to France. He was not taken; 
the list was full. Later, when troops were sent 
from this, a Northern camp, to one in the 
South, he applied again. Faced with it, he ad- 
mitted; "I want to travel. I want to get over 
as soon as I can." His idea was the "to see 
the sights" idea. And his type makes a good 
soldier, too. 

Self-conscious at first in their uniforms, the 
men of the National Army came to be proud 
of them. It took about a fortnight for the 
transition. Then came inquiries at the Regi- 
mental Exchange (General Store) for needles, 
fhread, and stain eradicators. One began to 
see men going off on Saturday, on pass, spruc- 
ing up before they left barracks. One won- 
dered at their thoughts as they passed among 
the civilians in near-by cities and towns. One 
saw them occasionally moving through the 
streets, heads erect, with swinging carriage, 
unconsciously walking the 120 steps to the 



86 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

minute prescribed by drill regulations, now 
become habit. Some of them were more care- 
ful of their deportment in uniform than in the 
days of civilian clothing. A spirit of pride of 
uniform was developing in the National Army, 
was a quiet dignity to it that got under the 
skin. 

What a change there will be a- year hence! 
This National Army is a thinking army, and 
war will work its magic upon them. At the 
front only big emotions exist. There the big 
things are life, death, courage, sacrifice, cow- 
ardice, and selfishness. Magically on the firing 
line life is reduced to these fundamentals. 
What is real is placed here; what is false 
is placed there. The real measure of a man 
comes out. He goes to help a wounded com- 
rade under fire or he skulks in a dugout and 
lets him die. The front sweeps away all arti- 
ficialities. There, man sees realities. He 
gains a close-up of values. 

Do you remember that little gem of a 
French story, ^'C'est la Guerre, Madame?'* 
The story about the French soldier who loved 
Paris so much that he hated to leave it; who 
went to the front and learned there the true 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 87 

yalues of life, visited Paris on leave and hated 
it? This experience in the National Army is 
going to make Americanism vital ; our boys are 
doing a lot of thinking; they will be doing a 
lot more when they get back from this war. 
And that is what we need in our country — the 
thinker who acts — men who can think pierc- 
ingly, who can act intelligently and fight with 
spirit. 

The barracks of the cantonment are two- 
storied affairs. Most of the men live in the up- 
per story. On Sundays visitors flock to the 
cantonments — girls. Three girls passed our 
barracks one day. A young "rookie" spotted 
them from the second-floor window and called 
some comrades. They opened the window and 
began whistling and shouting after the girls, a 
most crude flirtation. I was waiting to see 
how far they would go. It was but a few 
weeks after the camp had opened. One of the 
new soldiers — a little man, no. older than they 
— scurried across the barrack room floor to the 
group at the window. "Cut it out, fellows," 
he said. "You're not hanging around a corner 
saloon. You're in the army now. Don't dis- 
grace it." 

His words hit home and the group dis- 



88 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

persed. The men looked sheepish and 
ashamed. 

The ofBcers are doing everything they can 
to foster this spirit; to make the men take a 
pride in themselves and in their work. Our 
motto is, "We are going to fit you to return to 
your homesi better .men than when you left." 
That is a big job, but it will surely be accom- 
plished. 

A letter, of which I give an extract, came to 
our attention. It was written home by a new 
recruit: "It is really remarkable the way one 
is so hastily accustomed to camp life. It 
seems just like a big picnic, and the discipline, 
instead of being a damper to the ardor, adds 
a zest to the whole affair. Another thing 
which adds to the pleasure of camp life is that 
kickers and hogs are not wanted. The men 
were given a talk by our Captain this after- 
noon, and he laid special emphasis on conduct. 
I can see how easily a man of loose habits will 
be transformed into a really desirable charac- 
ter. It is impossible for me to express the feel- 
ing that is within me, and I can sense just that 
feeling in every man here. Whatever it is, it 
means something — and all I can say is, God 
help the Kaiser — ^when the completely devel- 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 89 

oped National Army is turned loose — over 
there." 

There is a most important word in the mili- 
tary lexicon. It is the word morale. Or call 
it esprit de corps^, elan, or spirit. They all im- 
ply the same thing. It is the spiritual effi- 
ciency of an army. Now conceive of two 
armies, each composed of just as good physical 
specimens, each just as well trained soldiers. 
One has a poor morale:, the other has a good 
morale. The one with the poor morale will be 
routed. 

What is morale? A French General termed 
it, "The spiritual quality that would cause a 
body of troops to gladly follow their com- 
mander through hell if he ordered it." Morale 
gets into the realm of the psychological. Let 
us examine some of its components. Let us 
make this examination from an ice-cold stand- 
point, leaving any consideration but military 
efficiency out of it. Looting is bad for the 
morale. It breaks down discipline. Camp fol- 
lowers are bad for the morale; they put sol- 
diers in the hospital. Poor food is bad for the 
morale \ it breeds discontent. As Napoleon 
said, "An army marches on its stomach." As 
an old house-wife will tell you, the way to a, 



90 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

man's heart is through his stomach. Lack of 
confidence by the men in their commanders is 
bad for the morale. They feel their lives are 
being trifled with. They will not unhesitat- 
ingly follow. Tyrannical conduct by officers is 
bad for the morale. It gives them sooner or 
later the viewpoint of the slave. No slave ever 
fought as well as a free man. To think of 
dying for no great cause is bad for the morale. 
It leaves a man flat. To know that by his 
fighting a great cause is being saved, that is 
ideahfor the morale. 

The spirit of the National Army is expand- 
ing. It is growing because our faces are in the 
light. No officer lets an opportunity go by to 
let his men know the kind of an enemy they 
will fight. The men have to be told these 
things. They have to be awakened to the fact 
that barbarians are loose in the world. They 
are responding to words like those uttered by 
a wounded English officer who came to one of 
our cantonments as a bayonet instructor. 

"Don't, men," he said, "make the same mis- 
take we did. You'll do it, if you are not cau- 
tioned against it. You are Americans, and all 
your training in sports will lead you to it. We 
were prepared to fight the enemy in a sports- 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 91 

manlike way. We did it, for a while, and then 
we couldn't do it any longer. He fights like a 
savage, and you've got to fight him in the same 
way. It's a terrible thing I'm telling you, but 
you have got to get what he's got — ^that's the 
blood lust. When you drive your bayonets 
into those dummies out there, think of them as 
representing the enemy. Think that he began 
the practice in this war of running bayonets 
through wounded, gasping on the ground, and 
defenceless prisoners. Think, men, that he 
made an attack on a Belgian position after 
gathering up the women and children of a Bel- 
gian village and marching them at the head of 
his troops — a dastardly screen ! 

"Another thing. We made an attack one 
day. As our first wave carried the enemy 
trench, they heard shouts from a dugout: 
*Kamerad! — Comrade!' The Germans sur- 
rendered. The first wave rushed on, leaving it 
to the second wave to take the prisoners. As 
soon as the first wave had passed, the Germans 
emerged from their dugout with a hidden ma- 
chine gun and broke it out on the backs of the 
men who had been white enough not to give 
them the cold steel. So now, men, when we 
hear * Comrade' coming from the depths of a 



92 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

dugout in a captured trench we call down: 
*How many?' If the answer comes back, 
*Six,' we decide that one hand grenade ought 
to be enough to take care of six and toss it in. 
They made us do that with their dirty, bar- 
barous warfare. They will make you do the 
same thing. They will crucify some of your 
men like they crucified the Canadians. So 
abandon all ideas of fighting them in a sports- 
manlike way. You've got to hate them!'* 

Now if you tell any normal man the truth 
about the German way of making war, hell 
hate. Slowly we reveal to the men in the Na- 
tional Army the kind of foe they will be up 
against. As their hate for the enemy increases, 
it will give the crescendo pitch to the morale — 
which is for America's good. 

One could go on and tell of scores of things. 
One could tell you of the Captain of one Bat- 
tery who told his men what the Liberty Loan 
meant and who, in half an hour, got $12,000 
worth of subscriptions for it. Think what that 
meant from 193 men getting only $30.00 a 
month as privates. It could be told that the 
same Captain subsequently went to New York 
to speak for the Liberty Loan at a hotel fre- 
quented only by the very wealthy. And that 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 93 

the very wealthy subscribed nearly $2,000 less 
than what his soldier boys had done. That is 
cited not as a slur at our wealthy people who 
have already taken up quantities of Liberty 
Loans; rather is it to set off by contrast the 
spirit of the National Army in going down 
deep into its j)ockets on $7.50 a week, the way 
it did. 

Would you know our army? Live with it 
awhile. See it turn out of bed every morning 
at half-past five and go through a day until 
five in the afternoon, pausing then for a brief 
two hours before plunging into a school at 
night. Drill in the daytime, military text 
books at night ; grind, grind, grind, with never 
a whimper, with set serious faces — that is the 
National Army. 

No conscripts — rather American men taken 
from all walks of life who know what this war 
is and v/ho have gone into it with their hearts 
loyal and their faces grim. For that is the 
army that is soon going "over the top" at the 
Hun. That is the Army which is fired with 
the spirit of its fathers and its grandfathers — 
of all those who have fought for Liberty and 
came to free America for Liberty — ^that eter- 
nal craving of Man in Evolution. 



CHAPTER y, 



''tub job of soldiering^^ 



These words are for you who will as you 
are called to the colors, become soldiers of the 
National Army. They are for your loved ones 
and friends. They are also for every one who 
reads in the newspapers about the National 
Army, who cares about it, which is hastening 
to mean all those who are not reposing in in- 
ternment camps. Should there be such, who 
may chance upon this, they will find in it scant 
comfort. For it will coldly tell of the lot of a 
soldier today in the National Army, free from 
the passion of the "muck-raker" and free from 
the distorted viewpoint of the "investigator." 

You are reading daily of the soldiers in our 

vast cantonments and of their lot. You are 

writing to them and they are writing to you. 

Occasionally you see photographs of them and 

their life in cantonment. But how much do 

3^ou really know about them? Do you know 

94 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 95 

how they are fed? How they sleep? What 
they w^ear? How they are cared for when ill? 
How they manage to get along on their pay? 
How they are amused? Why sports are en- 
couraged so much? Why food, clothes, quar- 
ters, medicine, amusement, and $30 a month 
isn't such a bad job? Unless you have lived 
the life of the National Army, you cannot 
know and understand these things. You can- 
not grasp it by merely visiting camp. You 
have to be in it. The letters home, they never 
tell it; and the letters from home, they are 
always filled with questions. "Do you get 
enough to eat?" . . . "You must be very cold 
down there ... I read in the papers that the 
boys at Camp Funston were going around in 
zero weather with nothing but thin coats on, 
. . . They didn't even have uniforms." 

In any undertaking as vast as the National 
Army, there is always bound to be had more 
misinformation than truth. Untruths are 
spread broadcast, innocently enough, by those 
who repeat gossip and in a sinister way by 
those whose intent it is to discredit our Army. 
I refer to the group that has stolen the word 
Socialism to use as a screen behind which they 
mask their activities for the Kaiser — that 



96 OUE FIRST HALF MILLION 

group today which is always prattling about 
"Free Speech." And I refer to the other type 
of Teutonic agent who will whisper to you 
that he has heard of this or that misfortune 
Jo our National Army. 

To be sure all is not perfect in cantonment 
life. That would, on the face of it, be absurd 
with so swift and so vast a preparation for 
war. Of ordnance — guns, rifles, pistols — we 
are short, for the moment. That is public 
knowledge, aired in a Congressional investi- 
gation. But our men are not poorly clothed 
nor are they cold or hungry. It is about time 
the truth were known. 

Anthony Wayne Putnam was called to the 
colors. Consider him as a composite of the en- 
tire draft. Think of him as reporting at any 
one of our National Army camps. They are 
alike. What happens to him in one, happens 
to him in another. The Putnams are clothed, 
fed, their health is looked after, likewise their 
amusements and their finances, by the same 
system. 

Upon his arrival at camp, Anthony Wayne 
Putnam's steps lead from the railroad station 
to. the regimental infirmary. He is there given 
a swift but searching look-over. He is in- 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 97 

spected for contagious diseases and for vermin. 
Not that the American youth believes the 
theory of the Russian peasants that one is not 
healthy unless one provides shelter for at least 
one tiny louse; but the Army Doctors are 
taking no chances. If the new recruit should 
have picked up vermin on the troop train en- 
route to camp, it is detected and he is "de- 
loused" before being allowed to enter the bar- 
racks with his comrades. If he has a conta- 
gious disease, he is immediately sent to the 
camp hospital. For example, we had a case 
the other day of a man who developed chicken- 
pox enroute to camp. 

At his regimental hospital, Putnam is given 
a vaccination against smallpox and an inocu- 
lation calculated to prevent him from con- 
tracting typhoid. Assume that he has passed 
this first test, the object of which obviously 
is to protect him and his conu-ades. He then 
reports to his Company Commander. Pres- 
ently back to the hospital he goes, this time 
for a searching physical examination. Back at 
the local board where he enrolled for the draft, 
he was stamped "Approved" by a civilian doc- 
tor. That is not enough for the Army; and 
the Regimental Surgeon goes over him. He 



98 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

goes over him with one thought in mind : Has 
this recruit any defect which we cannot cor- 
rect w^liich will render him liable to breakdown 
under military service? Feet, heart, lungs, 
teeth are tested. If the man's case seems at 
all doubtful, he is submitted by the Regi- 
mental Surgeon for rejection. Thereupon, he 
is sent to the cantonment hospital and a special 
examining board again goes over him thor- 
oughly. If they agree with the finding of the 
Regimental Doctor, the man is recommended 
for rejection. He is rejected by the Division 
Surgeon, home he goes. So if you know of 
anybody in the National Army to-day, you 
know they are physically fitted for it. They 
have had the acid test. 

Our recruit, Anthony Wayne Putnam, saw 
a man w^ho came dow^i on the train with him, 
going through the examination in the Regi- 
mental Infirmary. Every Regiment has its 
own Infirmary, its own staff of Doctors and 
Dentists whose job it is to look after the health 
of the men in that regiment. Recruit Putnam 
noticed that some men with flat feet were 
accepted. He thought this a little strange, 
for he had heard that the flat-foot men were 
useless on a march. Later he learned that such 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 99 

men had to report twice a day to the Infirmary 
for treatment to correct their fallen arches. 
He learned too that an X-ray photograph was 
taken of every such pair of flat feet and that 
as the special exercises went on, the photo- 
graph absolutely proved that the defect was 
being corrected. 

But no "flat feet school" for Recruit Put- 
nam. He passed the examination with flying 
colors and was ordered back to his barracks. 
Looking over his new home, he found it was 
a large building, made of wood but that the 
inside of it was lined with a composition which 
resembled heavy cardboard and shut out the 
cold and wind. He discovered that the lower 
floor of the barracks was devoted to the 
kitchen, a storeroom for food containing a big 
refrigerator, a dining room large enough to 
accommodate 190 odd men at a sitting, with- 
out crowding, a big sleeping room, a store- 
room for clothing, and the Captain's office. 
Going upstairs he saw that the entire second 
floor of the building was one huge sleeping 
room and noted with satisfaction that it con- 
tained two big stoves in which fires were al- 
ready burning and that there were stoves in 
the sleeping room downstairs and in the mess 



100 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

hall, too. "Yes, the quarters are warm," he 
thought. 

Then he was given a strong iron cot, a straw 
mattress, and two blankets, woolen army 
blankets the same color as his uniform, and a 
heavy comforter. A mess kit was next added 
to his nev/ possessions. Upon examining the 
kit he found it to contain a tin plate, a frying 
pan, a tin cup, knife, fork, and spoon. It was 
with a bit of misgiving that he glanced at the 
frying pan, the wild thought occurring to him 
that he would have to cook his own food. At 
meal times, however, he learned that he used 
the frying pan as an extra plate. 

Mess over, his clothing was given him. He 
drew down a pair of khaki pants and a pair of 
woolen ones ; a khaki coat and a woolen coat — 
two suits. A pair of canvas leggings, a hat, a 
poncho (raincoat), two suits of cotton under- 
clothing, two suits of heavy fleece-lined under- 
clothing, four pairs of socks, two flannel shirts, 
a blue denim suit to work around in, a belt, a 
heavy woolen overcoat and two pairs of shoes. 
The one pair was a russet that he could keep 
polished and always look smart in; the other 
was a field shoe of natural colored leather, hob- 
nailed and as strong as iron. Like most of 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 101 

his comrades, Recruit Putnam kicked against 
heavy field shoes and said they were uncom- 
fortable, until he learned the trick of rubbing 
them well with oil — then he swore by them. 

That's the wardrobe of your soldier boy in 
the National Army. It may not agree with 
some of the stories you have heard, with some 
of the indignant letters you may have seen 
written in the newspapers. I recall reading 
one such written by a well known woman fic- 
tion writer. Her very name inspired confi- 
dence. She stated that she had seen soldiers 
drilling on a cold day and wearing only thin 
civilian clothing — this at one of our middle- 
western cantonments. You can see the same 
thing at any of our cantonments if you hap- 
pen to come on the right day. What I mean 
is this. The situation is that the makers of 
clothing and equipment for the National 
Army are turning out these things just as fast 
as is humanly possible. Who could foresee 
in 1916 that we would need clothing for 
over a million soldiers? So we must be care- 
ful and conserve every article of clothing until 
we have plenty of it — ^which will be soon. So, 
we are not issuing uniforms to men the day 
they reach camp. We are not giving army 



102 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

clothes to them until they have passed the 
Army physical examination, until we know 
that they are going to be retained in the Army. 
Which is common sense. Also, it is impossible 
to give a soldier his clothing the very instant 
he has been physically accepted. 

Let me show you what has to be done. His 
size has to be taken for every article. Army 
clothes are not sized like department store 
clothes, by ages, or chest measurements. Dif- 
ferent measurements determine an Army size ; 
for example, a man with 25 inseam, 35 inches 
around the hips, 34 inches around the waist, he 
takes a size 4. So you see your recruit An- 
thony Wayne Putnam has to have the tape 
measure run all over him and all the readings 
recorded. Then his sizes and the sizes of all 
his comrades have to be determined. These 
have to be composited, put on a requisition 
sheet and sent down to the Quartermasters. 
There they have to be counted out, loaded on 
trucks, sent down to your barracks, and is- 
sued. This is not a matter of a couple of 
hours, rather a couple of days. In the mean- 
time, the recruit drills in his civilian clothes. 

No officer wants to see a man not in uni- 
form. It not only goes against the man's com- 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 103 

fort but it is a depressing feeling; moreover, 
if you have a lot of men ununiformed around 
camp, you don't know whether they are sol- 
diers or laborers. Officers do everything they 
can to get the soldier in uniform as quickly as 
possible. That accomplished, he must send 
home his civilian clothes at once. The ununi- 
formed men the woman letter writer saw drill- 
ing may have been men during that brief pe- 
riod of waiting for their clothing after their 
sizes had been taken. 

Is the soldier warm? You may judge from 
the clothing that has been issued. Also con- 
sider that he receives woolen gloves and inevi- 
tably a sleeveless sweater, which he is ordered 
to wear underneath his shirt. And should you 
see him drilling out in the open, don't be 
alarmed. He's exercising; you are not. 

Some men need more bed clothing than 
others. The Red Cross is procuring a third 
blanket for every man. With a comforter that 
should suffice for anybody but a man with 
anemia. For his case, he has the advice of his 
Company Commander to place layers of news- 
papers between two blankets and pin the edges 
of the blankets together. Consider that to 
look after his men is an officer's duty. He 



104 .OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

must see that the soldier's bed is comfortable, 
that he is well clothed, that his food is good, 
and well prepared, and that he has plenty of 
it. And more than anything he must satisfy 
himself that his soldiers are happy and con- 
tented. I believe that the most difficult thing 
for the average officer to acquire is not how 
to become a crack shot with a pistol, how to 
give commands and know whether or not they 
are being obeyed promptly; not how to ap- 
pear like a Lieutenant of the Prussian Dra- 
goons when saluting his superiors hut to know 
how to look after his men, without babying 
them or losing his grip on discipline. If he 
knows his military science and has the gift of 
imparting it to his men and if he knows besides 
how to look after them he is indeed blessed of 
the gods, for when it comes to battle he is go- 
ing to get far better results. He is going to get 
far more out of his men than the martinet who 
lacks the knowledge of human nature. The 
good officer has that keen personal interest in 
his men which will make him see to it that they 
are happy and contented and which will give 
him a nightmare until he knows that thej^ are. 
From association, I can say that most of the 
Commanders of the National Army have 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 106 

enough of a perspective upon life to know how 
to look out for their men. 

What does the soldier get to eat? Before 
we sit down to the table with Recruit Anthony 
W. Putnam — his middle name has been 
dropped by now, only its initial is carried offi- 
cially by the Army — understand the system of 
feeding. The word "ration" means three 
meals a day for a soldier. Every month, the 
amount of money allowed for the ration by 
the Quartermaster Department varies. It is 
40 cents, running a fractional part of a cent 
above and below. That means a soldier must 
be fed on forty cents a day. Before any in- 
dignant wife scornfully says, "Impossible," 
may I pause a moment. Each Company feeds 
itself. It has its own kitchen. It buys from 
the Quartermaster. It buys beef, a whole 
quarter at a time, for 15 cents a pound, any 
kind of a cut, costing the same — while you are 
paying 40 cents! It buys bacon at 45 cents 
a pound while you are paying 60 cents — po- 
tatoes at 2^ cents while you pay 5 cents — 
and so on. This is only possible because the 
Government buys in vast quantities and sells 
at cost or sometimes at a loss. 

Now the ration is worked out on a monthly 



106 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

basis. Say you have 200 men in your Com- 
pany. You are allowed 40 cents a day to feed 
each man. That makes a daily allowance of 
$80, a monthly one of $2,400. That sum is 
placed to your credit with the Quartermaster. 
You buy against it. 

Your recruit, Anthony W. Putnam is in a 
new organization. The Captain wants to se- 
cure a "Mess Fund." This is money saved 
upon the ration, any balance on your $2,400 
at the Quartermasters which is turned over to 
the Company at the end of the month. The 
Captain wants that saving because he is al- 
lowed by Army Regulations to spend it in any 
way he sees fit for the betterment of his sol- 
dier's food. He knows, for example, that he 
can't buy eggs, ice cream, chicken, lamb, pork, 
fresh fruit from the Quartermaster. But if he 
gets a savings on the first month's ration al- 
lowance, he has the money to buy these things 
"outside." The recruits do not know this. 
They invariably write home during their sec- 
ond month that the food is much better but 
don't know the why. Now, there is nothing 
the matter with army food. Officers from time 
to time eat from the barracks kitchen to check 
up that the food is good and ample. 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 107 

Here is a day's menu to which Anthony W. 
Putnams are sitting down. Breakfast : Stewed 
prunes, oatmeal and milk, bacon, boiled pota- 
toes, bread, coffee. Dinner: Vegetable soup, 
roast beef, boiled potatoes, peas, bread pud- 
ding, tea. Supper; Hash, dill pickles, fried 
potatoes, stewed apricots, coffee. 

The men go through a month of food like 
that, good, well cooked, but not greatly varied. 
My men went through it. At the end of the 
month, the records showed that we had saved 
$900 on the ration. The next month, the men 
got eggs, roast pork, roast lamb, ice cream, a 
greater allowance of sugar, occasional butter 
and this is what they said: "The chow is much 
better. The Captain has evidently been sit- 
ting upon the Mess Sergeant and making him 
come across." They did not know that the 
more varied food they got was only possible 
because the Mess Sergeant was skilful enough 
to keep them well if not fancily fed, to use all 
"waste" and thus make possible the $900 sav- 
ing. With that he was able to widen his bill 
of fare that month and automatically every 
month thereafter. That's the way the soldier's 
food is looked after. That's the way Officers 
try to give their men a good table. 



108 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

Which brings us to an institution called The 
Regimental Exchange ; that is, the Regimental 
Store, which sells ice cream, fancy crackers, 
cake, candy, tobacco, newspapers and knick- 
knacks for the comfort and amusement of the 
soldier. Also it keeps down the prices; also, 
it is co-operative. After the Regimental Ex- 
change has paid for its stock — which it gets on 
credit — its profits are divided equally among 
every Company. The money goes into the 
''Company Fund." The custodian of the Com- 
pany Fund is the Captain. He is authorized 
to spend that money in ways for the comfort 
and happiness of the soldiers and to help fa- 
cilitate the necessary clerical work. Out of 
that Company Fund, the soldiers buy them- 
selves pianos, Victrolas, "smokes" — if they 
are going to give a blow-out to another Com- 
pany — a pool table, anything at all that they 
want. Not forgetting that for the most part 
it is made up of money which they themselves 
have spent at the Regimental Exchange. 

Commanders will do everything they can to 
increase this fund for their men. One recalls 
a Captain who wrote letters to motion picture 
theaters in the town from w^hich his men came, 
suggesting that the theater put on and adver- 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 109 

tise a benefit show for their home boys down 
in camp. A check of $45 from one small town 
theater was the result. Newspapers in the 
home towns of the men were appealed to, to 
raise subscriptions. These came through. 
Women's clubs in the home towns were writ- 
ten requesting donations of tobacco or sweat- 
ers for the men. These came through. The 
Captain invariably found that if the people in 
the men's home town were appealed to directly 
and were told just what their donations were 
for that there was always a generous response. 
In waj^s like that are the National Army Com- 
manders increasing the comfort of their men. 
Take a man away from home hundreds of 
miles away, set him down in a camp where he 
is worked eight hours a day and he must have 
amusement. One cannot begin to record here 
what the Y. M. C. A., the Y. W. H. A., and 
Knights of Columbus are doing for the men in 
all our cantonments. Y. M. C. A. shacks, each 
containing a little stage, a blazing open fire- 
place, Victrola or piano, books, magazines, 
games, free writing materials are scattered 
over every camp. Motion picture shows, 
Broadway vaudeville, boxing bouts are puL on 
for the men. Only the other day in one camp 



no OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

the ninety musicians of the New York Phil- 
harmonic, under the leadership of Stransky, 
gave a concert in camp for the absurd admis- 
sion price of ten cents. That is a sample of 
the high-class talent furnished by the Y. M. 
C. A. for the amusement of the soldiers. 

And there are always several moving pic- 
ture shows a week. The "movies" are put on 
in every cantonment, the films or performance 
being sent on tour from camp to camp. But 
the Army does not stop there. Your wise 
Company Commander puts on more amuse- 
ment for his men. Every so often, he stages 
a "Company Night" in the mess hall. Boxing 
bouts between men of the Company are put 
on. Sometimes a monologist is discovered in 
the ranks, quartettes sing; now and then the 
Regimental band comes in and helps to liven 
things up. 

The singing — that is the thing! Every 
camp has a skilled song master who gathers 
the men in the great central Y. M. C. A. 
auditorium which is in every camp, and works 
up the singing spirit. The song master gets 
a thousand men to join in; and the men go 
back to their Regiments and start the singing 
there. Do you remember that old tune, ''The 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 111 

Old Gray Mare?'' Well, here's the words 
they're singing to it now: 

^^Our Uncle Sammy, he's got the Infantry; 

He's got the Cavalry; 
He's got Artillery, 

And now, by gosh, we'll all go to Ger- 
many, 
God help Kaiser Bill!" 

And so it goes, over and over. They seem 
never to tire of it. Singing in barracks, sing- 
ing on the march, it's fine for the men. 

In encouraging that, one looks ahead. One 
sees one of those gray winter days of France, 
a monotonous march to the front past endless 
villages that have come to look all alike, the 
novelty of their architecture worn off. One 
sees the monotonous passing, the other way, 
of empty transport wagons ; hours after hours 
of marching, with depression falling upon the 
men, damper than any French drizzle, and 
then for them to be able to sing, to sing to- 
gether, that is electrical in lifting spirits. 

Do you know that in the Divisions of the 
National Army, sports have been encouraged 
— athletic events, football, basketball? And 



112 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

in the Spring, baseball? Now, when sports 
do not interfere with the instructions of re- 
cruits, they are beneficial. The slogan is, 
"Amuse the soldier." Every Company in 
every National Army Camp was ordered to 
appoint an athletic officer. These officers work 
under a Divisional Athletic Officer in organ- 
izing competitions. Running races, jumping, 
and that sort of thing are held first in the 
Companies. Then Regimental teams are 
picked and these meet in competition for the 
championship of the Division. So with foot- 
ball and basketball. Last Autumn every camp 
had its championship football tourney, some 
of the games of which were attended by thou- 
sands of soldiers. So it will be with baseball. 

Now that has a two-fold purpose. It is a 
medical theory that men who participate in 
sports are not as apt to have their minds upon 
sexual intercourse as men may have who do 
not participate. This page is not a clinic for 
the discussion of the soundness of that theory. 
It is brought up merely to show that the health 
of the men is ever a determining factor — as is 
their amusement. 

Don't get the idea in your head that because 
your loved one is in the Army he's going to 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 113 

get wet feet and get cold and that nobody is 
going to look after him. Let the facts tell the 
story. Every morning if the recruit feels out 
of sorts he is ordered to go on "Sick Report." 
This means that he presents himself outside the 
Captain's office at a quarter of seven and is 
taken to the Infirmary. In civil life if you 
have the least little paip or ache, is there a 
Doctor on hand to examine you at a quarter 
of seven every morning? If the recruit's con- 
dition is at all dangerous, he is sent down to 
the hospital. If not, and the Doctor does 
not judge him well enough to drill, he is 
marked "Quarters," in which case he is ex- 
cused from duty all day. If he doesn't feel 
well the following morning, he reports again 
at the Infirmary. It takes a recruit some time 
to get used to Army Doctors. 

In civil life, a Doctor writes .a prescription. 
Somehow that inspires confidence. I know of 
Doctors who write elaborate prescriptions for 
colds, "Two dollars, please; come again to- 
morrow." This is not intended as a slap at our 
medical profession, but the doctor knows that 
his patient must be given some kind of a pre- 
scription or he won't feel he will get better — 
which is a psychological aspect of modern 



114. OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

medicine. Away with that in the Army! 
There, we have a theory that the three greatest 
medicines in their order are, water (for drink- 
ing and bathing) , salts and iodine. The Army 
doctors strive to make the men drink plenty 
of water, to flush out their systems. For most 
complaints, they will start you off with a good 
physic — to eliminate the poison that is causing 
the complaint in your system. They paint any 
open scratch or wound with iodine — because 
it's the greatest preventative against blood 
poison known. Until the recruit understands 
the reason for it, he is apt to write home that 
no matter what's the matter with him, the 
Army Doctors give him a dose of salts and let 
it go at that. They do not know, for example, 
that colds can be cured in that way, by that 
and by cutting away on the intake of food. 

When you think about the health of the men 
in the National Army and worry whether your 
boy isn't going to be sick and uncared for 
away from home, ponder upon these military 
truths. Every sick man takes one rifle away 
from the firing line. A sick army is only a 
hospital, and no hospital ever won a battle. 
The soldier is taught that it is as necessary for 
him to take care of his health as it is for him 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 11^ 

to take care of his rifle. The Army wants the 
men to be in the very best health possible, and 
everything that science can do to keep the sol- 
dier in good health, is done. You recall the 
Spanish- American War — the scourge of ty- 
phoid ? Do you know that for every man who 
died of wounds in that war, five and one-half 
died of disease? Do you think that we will 
tolerate a repetition of that? That if we 
could tolerate it, and were indifferent, 
survive against Germany? Do you know 
that every soldier in the National Army re- 
ceives an inoculation which renders him im- 
mune from typhoid. If he has not the typhoid 
in his system at the time the inoculation is 
taken he cannot get it. There have been cases 
where men develop typhoid after taking the 
inoculation, but those, with some few excep- 
tions, were cases of "walking typhoid." The 
man already had the disease but did not know 
it. Do you know how the soldiers are made 
immune from typhoid? 

Major Moss, in his Private's Manual, has 
compared the human body to an Army camp. 
Rioters (Typhoid Germs) enter and damage 
(action of a poison formed when typhoid 
germs enter the blood) . The Guard turns out 



116 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

(antitoxin, an antidote which the body makes 
to fight the poison). A fight follows (the 
symptoms of the disease). The Rioters (the 
typhoid germs) are overcome, and a period 
(convalescence) follows, in which the Camp 
(body) is restored to normal condition. 

Get that parallel in your mind if you w^ould 
understand the trick that the Army Doctors 
play to make the soldier immune from typhoid. 
Into a man's arm, they inject 50,000,000 dead 
typhoid germs in a little salt water under the 
skin. Immediately, the Guard (the body's an- 
titoxin) turns out only to find the Rioters 
dead. Their bodies are carried off. (This is 
the period of dizziness, headache and slight 
fever which a recruit feels after the first in- 
jection.) The Guard (antitoxin) remains on 
duty patrolling (floating in the blood). Ten 
days later, the needle goes into the recruit's 
arm again — ten days later for the third and 
last time, when all the antitoxin possible is 
made. That remains patrolling in the blood 
for about three years, so that if in that time ty- 
phoid germs enter the system, they are swiftly* 
overcome and sickness does not result. In just 
such ways as that is the health of the soldier 
conserved. 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 117 

I have told you how he is housed, bedded, 
clothed, fed, how his body is looked after, and 
how he is amused. What about money? He 
is the highest paid soldier in the world. A 
French Private gets 5 cents a day. A German 
3 cents. The English 25 cents. And the 
American $1.00. If the soldier is single and 
has no debts to pay off, he can save money. 
He is far better off than the farm hand, who 
in civil life gets from $30 to $40 a month and 
his board ; or the clerk on $25 a week. Figure 
it out. The cost in civil life of quarters, food, 
clothing, doctor. A soldier gets that free. 
And he gets $30 a month. Don't believe that 
every man in the National Army has to send 
money home. Also $10 a month is enough for 
him to spend considering all the free amuse- 
ment he gets in camp and the absurdly small 
cost for amusements — most of which are next 
to free. That gives him Twenty Dollars, 
which, if he is wise, he puts into Lib- 
erty Bonds and War Risk Insurance. He 
does that because that makes $20 of his pay 
a monthly obligation. He has to save it. If 
the man has dependents and sends money 
home, the Government almost doubles it for 
him. If he wants to be insured for $10,000 by 



118 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

the Government, he gets it by paying between 
$6 and $7 a month, according to his age. If 
he should be what soldiers call "Out of Luck" 
and become permanently disabled by the war, 
this insurance gives him a living monthly in- 
come from the Government for the rest of his 
life. No soldiers were ever treated as gener- 
ously by a Govermnent as ours. If they have 
dependents, it's a pinch to get through, but in 
war everybody must take a share of the bur- 
den. If they haven't dependents, if they are 
not saddled with old debts, lots of them have 
better jobs than they ever had or ever could 
get. 

The Government, the War Department, the 
Officers, the Red Cross, the Y. M. C. A., and 
kindred organizations, public-spirited citizens, 
generous women, are doing everything they 
can to make the soldier comfortable and 
happy. One might go as far as to say they 
are being coddled. Compared with the sol- 
diers of some other nations, they are coddled 
and they deserve every bit of coddling we can 
give them. Have you seen the slogan in the 
newspapers? "Adopt a soldier?" Do it. If 
you can't afford to lavish money upon him, 
send him a little gift once in a while, prefer- 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 119 

ably chocolate. He may not smoke, but he 
eats chocolate. That may seem trivial. Noth- 
ing these days is trivial. Nothing that can be 
done that will make the soldier feel that our 
people are thinking of him, that our people 
want to do everything they can to bring him 
comfort and joy and to drive away boredom — 
the nightmare that hangs above any over- 
worked Army camp. 

And when you hear doleful stories of freez- 
ing, half-starved men in our National Army 
Camps ; when the mud is stirred up, know that 
we are not taking men unless we can house, 
clothe and feed them, that we would take more, 
could we clothe them; know that the supply 
of clothes and all is accelerating every month 
and Spring is finding us well caught up. What 
the War Department has accomplished in a 
country so poorly prepared for war, as we 
were, is amazing. Mistakes there have been. 
They were inevitable, with a nation making 
ready for war so swiftly and on such a colossal 
scale. 

But when you think of our Army, think of 
a snowball. At the mountain top it starts to 
roll. At the start it is small. As it rolls on 
down it ever grows larger. But it is all snow 



120 OUR FIRST HALF MILLIOl^ 

(all men) . Further on it takes up into its sub- 
stance, frozen twigs (arms) ; further on loose 
pebbles (ammunition). Greater and greater 
it becomes, picking up here and there as it 
goes, until at the end it is vast and irresistible 
— our National Army. 



CHAPTER VI 



"harpooning the hun" 



A BIT of hill-land in flat South Jersey; the 
thinning smoke of a railroad train drifting 
above leafless winter trees; some scattered 
farmhouses, the country road leading off to- 
ward a distant village — that and no more, not 
a sign of life. Yet, a battalion of our infantry 
is on one of the hills. Were you in an aero- 
plane soaring above them you might detect the 
shimmer of steel, but only from on high could 
that be done. For the "doughboys" have dug 
themselves in. That hill is part of our trench 
system. 

Behind them, down the far side of the slope, 
in the meadow beyond, three batteries of ar- 
tillery are waiting. Were you standing in the 
next field you could not see that battery, it 
too, is "dug in" and camouflaged. Branches 
of trees, canvas daubed like dirt, make it in- 
conspicuous in the landscape. See that clump 

121 



122 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

of bushes far over to the right, well to the 
front, about a quarter of a mile from the end 
of the trench. Just a few bushes, nothing more 
to the eye, but deadly. In there crouch men 
with powerful field glasses; men with instru-. 
ments to determine the range and angles ; there 
a "buzzer" drones. For from those bushes a 
field telegraph wire hums back to the batteries 
with "firing data." For there are the eyes and 
the brain of those twelve camouflaged guns 
hidden back in the field waiting a word to 
throw shell on the enemy's trenches. But 
where is the enemy? 

Look from the hilltop where the trench is, 
across the little valley, follow up the slope on 
the other side. See those evergreens? Got it? 
There the enemy's trench begins. Take that 
on faith. If you haven't powerful glasses you 
can detect nothing unusual on that distant hill- 
side, and all that you see — don't see, rather — 
is a bit of a modern battlefield. For it 
was all planned by one of the French officers, 
who had been sent from the front to help the 
National Army. 

The expression has been used, "the empti- 
ness of the battlefield." Empty it is — until 
something starts. Something is starting now. 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 123 

Look! Bayonets bristle over the tops of the 
Jersey trenches. Men seem to leap out of the 
earth. There they go — the infantry! . . . But 
they're walking! That isn't a charge! , . . 
Gone are the days when soldiers frantically 
rush pell-mell with fixed .bayonets ; instead,, 
they walk quite leisurely and in front of them 
walks a curtain of bursting shrapnel and shell 
from their own guns, advancing as they ad- 
vance, not a second faster. It carries them 
right up to the enemy's trenches. They bay- 
onet the Huns and occupy the trench. 

Now the rookies in all National Army can- 
tonments are taught to do just that sort of 
thing. It is not all as simple as it seems. They 
are fighting the Hun in effigy before facing 
him in the flesh. Would you see it done? 

Off at the edge of the woods, just beside the 
barracks of the 3 — th Infantry at Camp Dix, 
is a "bayonet course." You see a first-line 
trench, then imitation barbed wire, then scaf- 
folds from which hang straw figures; beyond 
them, more barbed wire, more scaffolds, bags 
of straw lying on the ground, great holes dug 
in the ground, still more barbed wire, then a 
trench filled with straw figures. That is a 
"bayonet course." The straw figures are sup- 



124 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

posed to be German soldiers; the holes, shell 
craters. 

Of a fine morning in January, one could 
see on this bayonet course the members of 
Company I, of the 3 — th Infantry. Their 
Captain was talking to them. 

"Now, you men have been practising the 
bayonet drill. This morning you will go over 
the top for the first time. Remember, pick 
your way through the wire where passages 
have been made. In France, those passages 
will be made by your artillery blowing up the 
wire with shells and by your patrols cutting it 
at night. When you get up against one of 
those straw dummies out there, stick your bay- 
onet into it, as if you meant it. If you see 
any dummies lying on the ground, give it to 
them, too. They're to represent the shoulders 
of men in the trenches. The dummies hang- 
ing from the scaffolds are men out of the 
trenches. Now advance no faster than the 
Lieutenant, who will go with you. Your speed 
is the same that you will make in actual at- 
tack. You will not walk faster than a hun- 
dred yards a minute on this kind of ground. 
All right, down into the first line trenches 
there, and try it." 




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OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 125 

In single file the men disappear in the earth. 
The Captain catches a glimmer of steel above 
the top of their trench. Instantly he runs 
over. 

"First thing wrong. Some men lifted their 
rifles too high. I could see their bayonets. 
Now that only tips off the enemy that you're 
going to attack. The Hun does not like bay- 
onet fighting. Remember, he will be watch- 
ing your trench every minute. If he spots the 
flash of a bayonet, he'll telephone his artillery 
and his machine guns and they'll be sweeping 
No Man's Land with fire before you can get 
out of your trenches and go after them. All 
right, try it again. No bayonets showing this 
time." 

From the trench the Lieutenant's whistle 
sounds. Up over the top the rookies scramble. 
Their instinct is to run. The Lieutenant has 
to keep shouting at them to hold them to a 
walk. "Slowly men," cautions the Captain. 
They're picking their way through the barbed 
wire, now. There they go into the dummies! 
Steel flashes. Cloth rips, sixty of them jab- 
bing away at imitation Huns. One long 
thrust, a short jab, a leap over the "shell holes," 
and they're at the next set of dummies. Day 



126 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

after day, they do it. The first day is gener- 
ally quite tame and methodical. In a week 
things begin to liven up as they drive the steel 
home, you hear shouts from the men. An- 
other week and they've painted faces of the 
Kaiser on their dummies, joyously spearing 
them. Another week and they're cursing 
madly as they give them the steel. That week 
they are bayonet fighters. 

In the National Army the men are being 
taught that there can be no half-way business 
about the bayonet. It is an ugly weapon; its 
very appearance is disconcerting, a long knife 
on the end of a rifle. To us, the British Army 
has sent some of its best bayonet fighters to 
teach us that it is "no quarter given or asked." 
Come down and watch that same Company 
getting a talk from a British Sergeant. 
Around him in a crescent are rookies of the 
National Army. He is about to begin and 
they appear curious. That is their predomi- 
nant sign of emotion. He says: 

"Boys, I'll tell you first a story. It hap- 
pened at Gallipoli. One of our Tommies, a 
cockney, from London, was about to go over 
the top in a bayonet charge. A New Zealand 
Company was alongside his. The Tommies 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 127 

knew that the Turks didn't like bayonet fight- 
ing. Indeed, this time when we showed them 
the steel, they climbed out of their trenches and 
ran like rabbits. One Tommy had his eye on 
one particular Turk. He had spotted the beg- 
gar the day before. The Turk was always 
trying to take pot shots at Tommy. 

"Well, you can imagine it. The Turks run- 
ning down Gallipoli, the British after them, 
with fixed bayonets and yelling like hell. In 
a pursuit like that everything gets mixed. 
Tommy found himself alongside a New Zea- 
lander. They were both chasing the same Turk. 
The blighter showed his heels to Tommy. He 
was getting away, leaving Tommy behind at 
every stride. But Tommy doggedly kept on. 

"I say. Mate," panted the New Zealander, 
"take a shot at him." 

Tonmiy shook his head. The Turks seemed 
to run faster. 

"He'll be getting away on yer," warned the 
New Zealander. 

Tommy grunted something, and lovingly 
eyed his bayonet. Farther and farther the 
Turk drew away. It was more than the New 
Zealander could stand. Down on one knee he 
dropped, brought up his rifle and let go. It 



:128 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

was a hit; the Turk fell. In a rage Tommy 
turned on the New Zealander. 

"Blimme, you're the hell of a blokie. That 
was my Turk. What did you shoot him for?" 

"He was getting away." 

*'Stop chucking about him. He was my 
Turk. I wanted to harpon the " 

The British Sergeant, when finished telling 
this story, paused a moment, and eyed the 
rookies of the National Army. 

"The Tommj^ was right," he said. "You 
want to learn how to harpoon the Hun and 
you want to get to like it. That's going to be 
hard at first. It's a dirty weapon, the bay- 
onet. But, remember this, if you don't stick 
it into him, he's going to stick it into you. 
Every time you throw it into him, grunt as if 
you'd just eaten a mutton chop and liked it. 
Every time you let him have your steel be- 
tween his ribs, think of the American soldiers 
who were found in front of the trenches only 
the other week with their throats cut. Every 
time you soak it to him, remember what he 
did to the women of Northern France, and 
that he'd do it to the women of your country, 
if you let him win and come over here. Har- 
poon the Hun! Harpoon himr 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 129 

The faces of the rookies before, were cu- 
rious. Now they showed something of the 
thing that the Sergeant was after. They did 
not look like the same men. The rookie there, 
the one who had sold talking machines on the 
instalment plan, one now saw a drawn expres- 
sion to his mouth, that was entirely new. Jack 
Hopkins, who used to serve soda water, his 
eyes had narrowed and were gleaming a little 
strangely. Some of the others looked restless, 
uneasy. They had the first indications of the 
"trench face." 

Watch them now as they go at it ! See their 
bayonets slashing and cutting ! There they go 
ripping into the bellies of the bags of straw ! 

"Watch out!" shouts the Sergeant. "Some- 
times when you run your bayonet home it's 
hard to get it loose. Give the Dutchman a 
kick in the belly then, and he'll go tumbling off. 
Try it now, with one of the dummies." 

A wicked thrust, a grunt, a kick. "Good!" 
howls the Sergeant. "Soak it to the blooming 
beggar !" 

They keep at it for a few minutes, and then 
he blows his whistle for a halt. Their faces are 
perspiring. They are panting. They all look 
a little wild. 



ISO OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

"That bunch will do," comments their Cap- 
tain. "They'll love it soon." 

Now in all our National Army Camps, little 
sections of the West Front are reproduced — ■ 
as I described at the start of this chapter. The 
trenches are dug by the men in all kinds of 
weather — for wars have a way of being fought 
in bad as well as in good weather. Emplace- 
ments for the guns are dug. Motor transports 
are kept on the move. Stretcher bearers are 
taught how to pick up and carry away men. 
Patrols and observation parties go out, make 
maps, scan distant positions through long 
glasses. Everything that is necessary in a 
modern battle is rehearsed. 

Now to understand the things the Ameri- 
can Army will be doing in France, to follow 
the newspapers intelligently — and everyone is 
following them minutely with the American 
Army now in action — it is necessary to un- 
derstand how a modern battle is fought. One 
must begin with the perfection of mechanical 
things, the machine gun, artillery, aeroplanes.- 
The introduction of these weapons to war, 
changed war. The battles you see in the mo- 
tion pictures, they are false. The battles you 
read about, they no longer happen. When 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 131 

troops are subjected to the firing of machine 
guns and artillery in the open, their losses are 
enormous. That is due to the advance of 
science. So troops are not exposed in the open 
very often. They are "dug in." They live 
underground in trenches, relatively safe from 
machine guns and artillery, until an attack is 
made. Then every possible device is used to 
prevent heavy loss while the enemy is doing 
everything he can to inflict it. That is war 
on the West Front to-day. 

Now a modern battle begins months before 
it is fought. There is a consultation at which 
the Commanding General of the Army, his 
Chief of Staff, the General in command of all 
the Infantry, the General in command of all 
the Artillery, General of aeroplanes, engineers, 
signal communications, transportation, medical 
corps, all are present. Something like this hap- 
pens. The Commanding General says : 

"It has been decided to attack the enemy's 
line from X to Y, penetrating it to the city of 
Z. Preparations for the attack will begin at 
once. I have approved the plan submitted by 
the Chief of Staff and Generals in Command 
of the different arms will consult with us." 

The Infantry General tells the Chief of 



132 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

Staff the exact condition of the Infantry — • 
how many are in reserve, what their morale is, 
the condition of their equipment. The artil- 
lery commander gives similar facts concerning 
the guns. He says that to destroy the enemy's 
trenches and artillery before the infantry at- 
tack, he will need so many thousands of guns 
and tons of ammunition. The General in 
charge of transportation says that he can get 
all needed supplies up to the front by a cer- 
tain date. The Medical General asks the Chief 
of Staff for an estimate of the probable losses, 
and makes his arrangements for handling the 
wounded. So it goes. Each of the highest 
officers attends to his own department. 

Activity begins at once. Increased ship- 
ments of ammunition, rifles, guns, all kinds of 
supplies, are made from the bases, hundreds 
of miles behind the firing line. Special rail- 
roads are constructed to bring this material up 
to the front at the desired points. There the 
wide-gauge lines give way to tracks only a 
foot apart. Motor trucks and pack animals 
are used. Also, the roads down which these 
supplies must come to the front must be hid- 
den from the enemy, so the Engineers camou- 
flage them. They erect screens along the roads 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 1S3 

for miles and miles, hiding them and conceal- 
ing all movements upon them. 

The artillery is active. Battery after bat- 
tery is brought up from the rear and put into 
position. Denser and denser grows the line of 
guns, until there are as many as twenty-four 
hundred, all sizes, on this limited strip of front 
where the attack is to be made. The aero- 
planes get busy with two kinds of flyers. The 
birdmen, whose job it is to observe and photo- 
graph the enemy lines and behind them, leave 
their nests. The fighting flyers whose job is 
to destroy every enemy aeroplane that seeks 
to fly above the American lines are ready. The 
enemy's General Staff must be blinded. They 
must not know the preparations that are go- 
ing on behind the American front. As quick- 
ly as the Huns send up their aeroplanes to ob- 
serve they must be destroyed. No matter how 
many of your own machines you destroy in 
doing it. 

The infantry gets busy. At night, little 
groups of four and five men creep out over 
the tops of the trenches. Anything conspic- 
uous about them is concealed, even their faces 
are blackened. They slide over the ground 
toward the German trenches. Their mission 



134 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

is to report on the condition of the enemy's 
barbed wire, to locate, if they can, hidden ma- 
chine guns, to pick out what prisoners they can, 
so as to know exactly what troops will oppose 
them in the battle to come. 

Our artillery continues its activity, not firing 
yet, but watching the enemy, learning just 
what kind of guns he has in action, spotting 
their location and thus estimating how many 
guns we will have to put into action to over- 
power him. We can tell, once we see the dis- 
tant flash of his gun, what it is. The German 
77 M.M. (like our three-inch) for example, 
gives out short flames, and of a pale green, 
lurid color. Their 130 M.M. howitzer flashes 
red, mixed with yellow smoke. Or, if we don't 
see the flashes, we can tell the caliber from the 
size holes that their shells make in the ground. 
We know that their 150 M.M. shell will make 
a crater over nine feet in diameter, and about 
three feet deep. We know that their 130 M.M. 
shell passing through the air gives a more stri- 
dent whistle than their 150 M.M. We know 
also, from picking up fragments of those shells, 
just what size guns they are firing. We can 
tell from these markings, F. K. (Feld Kan- 
one), field gun; L. F. H. (licht feld Hau- 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 136 

bitze), light field howitzer. We can tell very 
often the location of that gun, even if it is 
miles away, by the angle at which the shell hits 
the ground, and the sound of its approach 
timed with the discharge of the gun. I am 
mentioning but a few of the methods we have 
for getting a line on their artillery. What our 
Allies have learned in this war is ours. 

So does infantry, artillery, each arm of the 
service, make its plans, gain information. 
Along toward the day when the battle is to 
start, when all the ammunition has been 
brought up, when all the guns are in position, 
when the bombardment is about to begin, we 
make a "trench raid." Now that is a very nice 
manoeuvre. 

Just imagine yourself looking at a map. 
The letters. A, B, C, D, all represent enemy 
positions. We are going to make a raid into 
C. The purpose of this raid is information. 
We want to bring back live Huns whom we 
will make talk. Also, we want to know cer- 
tain things concerning them. So we plan to 
put the points. A, B and D, under such a vio- 
lent artillery fire, that the Huns will not be 
able to send soldiers to the assistance of point 
C. We shut off C from the rest of the enemy 



136 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

line, by dropping around it an impassable 
screen of bursting shell. Then our infantry- 
rushes into C, gobbles up their prisoners, 
makes observations and hurries back to our 
own lines. When you read in the newspaper 
of the "trench raid" that is the reason for it — • 
information. 

To appreciate the infinite care and impor- 
tance attached to these "trench raids," consider 
that in an attempted "trench raid" by the Ger- 
mans, on April 14, 1916, they used 5,250 
rounds of artillery ammunition on a section of 
the front that was not five hundred yards. 
They were after information. They got it. It 
was not particularly comforting information. 
I quote from the report of the German Cap- 
tain Wagener, of the 110 Reserve Infantry 
Regiment, which made this raid. . . . He was 
ordered to sound out the morale of the British 
troops opposite him. The German Captain 
who made the raid was subsequently captured. 
His report was found on him and a part of it 
translated as follows: 

"The regiment of Royal Irish Rifles created 
a most favorable impression, both as regards 
the physique of the men, and their mode of re- 
pelling an assault. But for the effect of gas 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 137 

shell, it would not have been possible to clear 
the section of trench, held by one entire com- 
pany." 

In other words, the Huns learned that the 
men opposite them were not weak sisters and 
were not to be judged lightly. If, upon re- 
ceiving a more favorable report from the com- 
mander of the trench raid; if the raid had 
shown that the troops opposite were in poor 
shape, then Hindenburg might have ordered a 
sudden and powerful offense at that point of 
the line in the hope of breaking it. So the 
trench raid brings in the last bit of informa- 
tion. It brings in the human equation, the 
morale of the enemy. This established, the 
bombardment of the artillery begins, and the 
infantry goes over the top at the Hun. How 
this is done is shown in the chapter on "The 
Glory of the Guns." 

Yes, a modern battle is prepared and re- 
hearsed for months. Before the English took 
Messines Ridge, they built an exact duplicate 
of it, miles behind their firing lines and cap- 
tured it in practice a score of times with their 
artillery shooting duiimiy trenches and their 
infantry going after dummy soldiers. The 
British worked on that battle until they had! 



f 138 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

I - . . 

every detail of it fought out in advance. Then 

they went into it and won an enormous victory. 

How Napoleon would have revelled in the 
facilities that a Commanding General has to- 
day! Aeroplanes, runners, carrier pigeons, 
wireless, telephone, telegi^aph, signal lights, 
mirrors, motorcycles, all those things are bring- 
ing to him by the minute the important bit of 
information about every event that is happen- 
ing during the battle. He stands in front of a 
map, upon which the position of his troops and 
the enemy's troops are changed by the minute 
as the reports come in. And there, in a house, 
twenty miles behind the firing line, he directs 
perfectly, every forward and backward move 
in that inferno which his command has opened 
up "out there." In come the reports, out go 
his orders. 

To hear the typewriters rattling, the phones 
ringing, telegraph clattering; to see men all 
about making quick calculations with numbers, 
to see the tide of incoming and outgoing cor- 
respondence, the orders, you might — were it 
not for the uniforms — think you were in the 
office of some great corporation instead of be- 
ing in the Headquarters of a General whose 
army was firing off a quarter of a million tons 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 139 

of ammunition and trying to tear land loose 
from the invader with the least possible sacri- 
fice of life. 

Picture that one man there, studying that 
map, staff officers running to him, "General 
Baird telephones that he cannot hold unless 
an Infantry Brigade is sent to reinforce him. 
• . . The Sixth Division wants an extra aero- 
plane squadron. . . . General Hooper says that 
he will soon be able to put the cavalry into 
action and wants your approval. . . . General 
Briggs says he must have two brigades more 
of Field Artillery. 

Scores of messages like that are brought 
to the General's attention. On each one he 
must decide in a flash and make the right de- 
cision. He cannot take the proposition home 
overnight, like a business man does. Over- 
night, the enemy might do one hundred things. 
And he must make the right decision, or he 
will leave a hole in his line through which the 
enemy may pour and crush him. The Lieu- 
tenant who goes under fire, any worrying he 
may or may not do, is nothing compared to 
the staggering responsibility that is a Gener- 
al's far removed from the firing line during a 
battle. His orders control the movements of 



140 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

a quarter of a million men. The lives of a 
quarter of a million men are in his hands. The 
strain he is under, the conflicting reports ever 
coming in that he must instantly decide the 
real value of, are enough to drive a man mad. 

Yet, these battles to come are all really be- 
ginning in the training camps with the rookies 
harpooning straw Huns, with the artillery 
taking up dummy positions. They'll get 
nearer to it in France in the battle atmosphere. 
There our men will begin to think in terms of 
battle. And then of a day not far off, it will 
start. You will read in the papers of trench 
raids, and the like, and then, of a victory — the 
first victory for the National Army. 

And it will be a victory, for the National 
Army will not go into action until it is ready. 
We are not going to feed untrained troops into 
the German maw, for if there is anything the 
Huns can do, it is to gobble up untrained 
armies. No, we are going to fight the Hun 
in efiigy, in our training camps, and when we 
get ready, entirely ready for the job, we're 
going after him — and harpoon him for all time. 



CHAPTER VII 



"remember SAN JUAN'* 



How they sing ! They came singing. They 
sang all through their first day in cantonment. 
They're singing to-day. Hark! 

^^De bells ob hell go ting -ling -a-ling, 
O Death where is thy sting -ling -a-ling? 
O ting -ling -a-ling ! O sting -ling -a-ling 1 
No bells ob hell will ring -ling -a-ling fo^ me!" 

We know they're our boys coming, for none 
in camp can sing like them. Here they come 
swinging out of a Jersey turnpike into Camp 
Dix. Look at the beautiful rhythm of their 
column, the rise and fall of their slouch-hatted 
heads, as regular as the ocean's roll. Hear the 
tramp of their hob-nailed feet, the steady un- 
broken swing of their cadence. "One-two- 
three-four!" Notice how evenly those olive 

drab legs and arms move. If motion has 

141 



i42 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

J)oetry, you see it now. For it's instinctive for 
our boys to drill. To hold a cadence is no 
effort. It was in them before they became sol- 
diers. Rhythm is in their souls. They were 
born with it — for they belong to the Ninety- 
second Division. 

Never heard of the Ninety-second? It's the 
Negro Division of the National Army. Infan- 
try, Artillery, trains, entirely Negro. It's the 
Division that's going to write its name big be- 
fore the Hun gets on his knees. And if I 
know the Hun — if my memory of the havoc 
France's Negro troops wrought against him in 
the autumn of 1915 in the Champagne, goes 
not astray — the Hun will come to hate the 
Ninety-second Division. Fine ! 

"Your grandfathers fought to give us our 
liberty," one of our Negro Lieutenants told 
me, "we are fighting to preserve yours." 
Ideals. They are there in the Ninety-second. 

Come with me into our barracks — for my 
own regiment is in that Division — look over 
the sort of material we have. Notice that tall, 
splendidly set-up fellow there with chevrons 
on his sleeves. He's acting as our First Ser- 
geant. 

"Come on ! Hurry up, yo' men. When ah 




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OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 143 

blows dat whistle, ah looks fo' yo' all t' be in 
line in jess tu seconds," and quite ostenta- 
tiously he glances at a watch he sports on his 
wrist. He's had military training before, the 
Sergeant, got it at Hampton Sidney, the Ne- 
gro boys' school. 

Come into the barracks office. See that 
trim young fellow there, who seems so neat. 
Glance over his shoulder. He's steeped in the 
"curse of the army," checking up Morning 
Reports, Duty Rosters, Ration Returns. He's 
mastered "Army Paper Work." Question 
him and you'll find he left the Liberal Arts 
course at Ohio State University for the Na- 
tional Army. When one records that in these 
days of war a Captain detests the hum-drum 
detail of voluminous "paper work," you can 
imagine what a relief to find a private to whom 
it can safely be entrusted. And we're finding 
such reliable, painstaking men right in the Ne- 
gro Division. 

If you would intimately know the Negro, 
you must be with him, hour after hour. The 
solicitous white-coated man who waits upon 
you in a dining car, he is not representative. 
Nor is the eager bellhop who answers your 
hotel ring, "Ice water, Boss?" Nor is the 



144 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

shiftless driver of a team of mules. If you 
would understand the Negro, you must meet 
him in the composite. And it is in the Na- 
tional Army that you find the composite. You 
find the dining car waiters, the bellhops, the 
cooks, the gang laborers ; but you find, too, the 
high school graduate, the Negro college man, 
the stenographer and typist, the young Negro 
who left a good job in a bank to answer the 
nation's call. You find an abundance of 
trained chauffeurs, a number of men skilled in 
trades, and — Allah be praised! — ample who 
understand horses and the care of them. An 
Artillery Captain is always on the alert for 
that. And as you study your men you get a 
new idea of the Negro race. You appreciate 
its fight and admire its pluck. You realize 
that many of these men have fought their way 
up through life; that decent jobs have been, 
theirs ; and there is something far more to them 
than "jazz bands," razors and dice. 

Their spirit is good. Do they want to fight? 
Watch them as they are gathered for a "con- 
ference" in the barracks mess hall. In an or- 
derly manner they file in and take seats; dis- 
cipline comes easily to them. Their Captain 
— a white officer — surrounded by his Negro 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 145 

Lieutenants (and later, a word about those 
Negro Lieutenants) , is explaining to them the 
reason they are fighting, giving them the why 
of it, just as all the white troops in the Na- 
tional Army are being told. 

"Men," the Captain tells them, "our coun- 
try will be proud of its Ninety-second Division 
before the war is over." 

Their faces are quite solemn and set. There 
is a stir in the rear of the hall. A young pri- 
vate who used to drive a motor for the Mayor 
of Jacksonville jumps to his feet, snaps his 
heels together and salutes. 

"Captain, may Private M say a few 

words to the men?" The captain gives his con- 
sent and, a little curious, awaits developments. 
"I want to impress on all you fellows," begins 
the private in the best of English, "that we've 
got a reputation to keep up. Some of you 
know about San Juan hill. Some of you don't. 
I'll tell you. My father was there. At San 
Juan, the white troops got in a bad hole. The/ 
Spaniards had the range and were making it 
hot . . . Isn't that right, Captain?" he 
appealed. The Captain agreed, and, encour- 
aged, the enthusiastic little soldier went on: 
Things would have broken bad for the white 



"to 



146 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

troops if the colored boys hadn't come along. 
Negro infantry ran up on the double, breezed 
right through the Spaniards' fire, got after 
them and gave them hell . . , Pardon me. 
Captain," he ejaculated in alarm, "but Teddy 
Roosevelt, he said the colored boys fought fine 
at San Juan. So see, fellows, we've got a rep- 
utation to keep up. We'll do to the Germans 
what our fathers did to the Spaniards. Won't 
we?" 

A loud, eager chorus, "You bet . . . 
We'll carve dem up ! Say, boy, no crap game 
fight '11 hold up to the devil we'll raise wif th' 
old Kaiser." A babel of excited exclamations 
— they are nothing if not spontaneous — fills 
the mess hall. The Captain holds up his hand 
for quiet. 

"That's the idea, men," he tells them. "Re- 
member San Juan!" 

There's no lackadaisical air to this Ninety- 
second Division. It's on its toes. It is ever 
being brought to the attention of the men that 
this is the first time in American history that 
there has ever been a Division, a complete 
fighting unit of over twenty thousand men, 
composed entirely of Negro soldiers. They are 
getting a big pride in it. They feel it a tangi- 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 147 

ble sign of trust in them. They feel they are 
indeed Americans, fighting shoulder to shoul- 
der with white Americans for common cause — 
liberty. And in that there is something fine 
for our country. 

Negro cavalry regiments, Negro infantry, 
they are not new. But Negro Artillery, that is 
new. And it is a high compliment to him. It 
is a military truth that a higher degree of in- 
telligence is needed for the rank and file of Ar- 
tillery than for the infantry. Especially to- 
day. Orders are given the men at the guns 
and they must set off to a nicety certain num- 
bers on different complicated instruments, giv- 
ing to the gun its direction and range — aiming 
it with mechanical means. Now to do that 
swiftly and accurately requires a quick and re- 
liable mentality. It is the job of the artillery- 
man in the Ninety-second Division. France 
has no Negro Artillery; nor has England. And 
our boys know it. We have told them. We 
told them to give them pride in their work. 
They have that pride. Do you know what I 
heard one day? I was going upstairs into the 
squad room of the barracks when a private's 
elevated voice caught my ear. 

"Ah tells yo' all dat this am th' first colored 



148 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

artillery in all history. Boys, th' eyes ob th* 
whole colored race am upon us." 

As quietly as possible I retraced my steps, 
to let them have it out. That is the encour- 
aging thing, the pride they have in their new 
work and in their Ninety-second Division. 
Pride is the hand-maiden of morale. And 
morale is the soul of an army. 

How eager they were for their uniforms! 
How they besieged us to exchange coats and 
pants until they got just the right fit! If one 
thought an overcoat wasn't showing off the 
graceful curves of his back quite properly, 
back he came for another. And always with 
some excuse, the real reason, his desire to look 
"doggy" and smarter than his comrades, art- 
fully concealed. 

"Captain," said a tall, lanky one, "this yere 
overcoat am mighty fine. It surely am a swell 
coat — but Captain three ob th' buttons am 
shore missin'." 

And he looked heartbroken. The Supply 
Sergeant rummaged through the stack of coats 
to find him another. The "rookie" followed 
his every move, his eyes rolling. 

"Captain, ef Ah may suggest it. Ah believes 
one of dem sho'ter coats dar," and he pointed 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 149 

to a pile of abbreviated overcoats, "would do 
most becomin' well." 

Now it happened that the early overcoat 
shortage made us use the shorter coat of the 
Engineering Corps to eke out the supply of 
the regular long-length army coat. This 
dusky "rookie" had his eye on one of the short 
coats and had made up his mind to get it. His 
size being unavailable in the regular lengths, 
he had to be given one. With glistening eyes 
he handed over his long coat with the three 
buttons missing and received the short coat — 
the dream of his heart. How he strutted 
around in that, the envy of the whole battery! 
And then Saturday inspection came. Looking 
over that "rookie's" shelf for dust, a Lieuten- 
ant found three overcoat buttons. 

"What's this. Private Housam?" he asked. 
"Where did these buttons come from?" 

Out of the corner of his eye the "rookie" saw 
the Captain bearing down. Remembering the 
yarn he had told about his old coat being three 
buttons short, he went panicky. Then show- 
ing his white teeth in a grin, he said: "Lieu- 
tenant, Ah tells yo' how dem buttons got dere, 
but Ah doan know." 

"You've got just a minute to find out, Pri- 



150 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

vate Housam," said the Captain, while he 
glared at the "rookie's" short coat. 

Private Housam looked distressed. His 
eyes swam swiftly from one side to the other, 
like netted fish; then they shone happily. 

"Captain, Ah sure knows now how dem but- 
tons come dere — yas, suh," and he paused for 
inspiration. "Yas, suh. Some of th' boys 
sweepin' must hab found 'em on th' flo' and 
jes' natcherly laid 'em on mah shelf, knowin' 
how Ah lose buttons. Ah guess dat am a fail- 
in' o' mine. Captain." 

"It's a failure this time, all right. Private 
Housam," agreed the Captain. "Now you 
take that short coat back, turn it in, and get 
back your long one. And as you cut those 
buttons oif it, you can take your Saturday and 
Sunday holiday this week to sew them on. 
Understand?" 

"Yas, suh. Yas, suh!" And so departed 
the glory of the short coat. So were dissipated 
all visions of "dogging" it over his comrades 
and getting the eye of the girls when "on pass" 
he went to toAvn. Yes, they'll try to put one 
over, some of them "jest natcherly," if you 
give them the chance ; but not in a sinister way ; 
just some harmless sort of thing, like the coat. 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 161 

There came to us a bellboy from a well- 
known Rochester hotel. His training in the 

uniform of the hotel, his promptness in an- 
swering the head clerk's call, fitted him into 
things at the start. All went well until the 
day before he was leaving on Christmas pass. 
It happened that the Captain had been lectur- 
ing them before about the uniform. 

"No leather leggings or cloth spirals will 
be worn by any enlisted man," the Captain had 
ordered. "No hat but the campaign hat that 
has been issued you." 

It never occurred to the Captain to warn 
them about uniforms. Hadn't they all been 
given their clothing? But he knew from ob- 
servation, particularly on the streets of New 
[York, that green privates on pass have a way 
of dolling up in officers' legwear and caps. 
Imagine his surprise, then, to have the Roches- 
ter bellboy, his model of deportment for the 
battery, come into the office with the follow- 
ing: 

"Captain," he began hesitatingly, "Ah heard 
yo' say somethin' 'bout what we must wear." 

"Yes, Private Coverhill. What is it?" 

"Well, Captain," this with an effort, "Ah's 
done gone an' bo't mahself a suit." 



162 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

"What kind of a suit?" asked the Captaiit 
suspiciously. 

"Oh, jes' a nice li'F suit fo' good," hastily 
replied Private Coverhill. "In th' main, Ah'd 
say th' effect was like th' one Ah haves on." 

"Go and get it," said the Captain ominously. 
Private Coverhill looked distressed. "It am 
'most like th' one Ah haves on," he offered. 

"Go and get it," repeated the Captain, and 
to himself he said: "Ye gods! What's this 
kid blown in his money on?" 

Presently there came a timid knock on the 
Captain's door, and Private Coverhill, care- 
fully unwrapping endless sheets of tissue, dis- 
closed a natty olive drab serene uniform. The 
Captain almost jumped out of his chair. 

"Hold up the pants," he ordered. 

Timidly the bellboy did as he was bidden. A 
pair of officer's pants with buttons instead of 
laces below the knee, met the Captain's gaze. 

"Now the coat." 

And, of course, it was the close-fitting, high- 
collared officer's coat. 

"Now, Private Coverhill, where did you get 
this?" 

"Ah reads a tailor's notice in th' papers and 
writes him." 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 153 

"And?" asks the Captain. 

"Th' tailor he sends me a paper t' fill out 
wif mah measurements. One ob th' boys in 
th' barracks measures me." 

"And then you sent this tailor — how 
much?" 

"He says Ah gotta give him twenty dollars, 
and Ah does. And Ah must give him ten dol- 
lars out ob mah pay for five months." 

"Hm," muses the Captain. "Seventy dol- 
lars — for a twenty-five-dollar suit. What's 
that tailor's name?" 

"Ah has his card, Captain," and Private 
Coverhill fished out a thumbed bit of paste- 
board, reading: Abe Finhel, Military Tailor^ 
Trenton, N, J, 

"Now, Private Coverhill, you leave the suit 
with me and give me your receipt for the 
twenty. I'll get you your money back." 

The bellhop's face fell. "Kain't Ah wears 
it. Captain?" 

Laboriously it was explained to him that 
soldiers wore one kind, officers another kind of 
uniform ; and that the tailor, knowing this, had 
swindled him. 

"But it sho'ly do look nice on me," pleaded 
the bellboy, with regret. 



154. OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

"That's all, Private Coverhill. Do as I say." 

White soldiers have to be watched lest they 
squander their money, but that problem with 
the colored boys is greater. Many of them are 
marks for the sharks that open "bargain 
shops" just outside the military jurisdiction of 
every cantonment. But a few days in camp 
they were, and one noticed them sporting the 
collar ornaments, monogrammed letters of the 
United States National Army and crossed 
cannons, although these things had yet to be 
issued. Childlike, they dove into their pockets 
to buy them, to get all the "show" possible on 
their uniforms. That is good. It is a sign of 
pride in their appearance. But against extrav- 
agance, the heedless spending of money which 
they haven't got, a Captain of Negro troops 
has to watch. For there are always trades- 
people ready to get them in over their heads. 

But there are others among them as canny 
as any Scot. 

There were men in my battery, a surpris- 
ingly large number, who voluntarily deducted 
almost $7 a month from their pay for the pur- 
chase of $10,000 government war insurance 
policies — the limit by law that any private or 
officer may take out. There were others who 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 156 

allotted $20 of their $30 monthly pay to dif- 
ferent savings banks. All were loyal to their 
families, allotting to them the one-half of their 
pay that the government compels, and more 
besides. I went over these allotment blanks of 
my battery, spending considerable time upon 
them, seeking an idea of the sense of respon- 
sibility different men had. I was relieved to 
find that only about one out of every five was 
obviously shiftless and thoughtless, allotting 
nothing for insurance or savings. A high av- 
erage of thrift, that of 80 per cent. But as 
always in life, the commendable is common- 
place while the condemnable upthrusts its head 
in the news. 

But in the recording of those instances of 
the squandering of money on officers' uniforms 
and the like, one hopes that the impression has 
not been given that the Negro soldiers are all 
that way. I recall a man we have in mind for 
Stable Sergeant. His record cards showed 
him married and with three children. Some- 
where an Exemption Board had blundered. 
He told me one night as we were trying him 
out on horses — he had tended horses for ten 
years in Texas before turning traitor and tak- 
ing a chauffeur's job : 



156 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

"All Ah want," he said, "is to know dat mah 
wife an' babies are comferable." 

"How are they fixed?" the Captain asked. 

"Capt'n, Ah figure dat mah wdfe can get 
along all right fo' a while. Ah saved mah 
money, an' she can use dat. And Ah figures 
dat if a man does what he's told in th' army 
an' does it good, dat he'll get along. Ah fig- 
ures dat th' ofiicers are dere because they 
knows what t' do o' they wouldn't be over us. 
Th' gov'ment ain't no fool. So if a man obeys 
his officers an' works hard, he'll get along. 
No," he added, with confidence, "All ain't 
worryin'. Ah gets along." 

And as he works, he will. 

As Mustering Officer for our regiment there 
came across my desk all the documents from 
all the Exemption Boards for all our men. I 
made it a point to notice those w^ho had asked 
for exemption, and later to ask them why. 
One was surprised to find that a surprisingly 
small number of the Negroes called to the col- 
ors had sought exemption. Questioning de- 
veloped that the life appealed to some of them 
— the end of worry over financial troubles. 
The $30 a month, clothes, board and lodging 
looked good. More of them thought they 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 157 

would like Army life : the drill, the uniform — 
particularly the uniform — and for the adven- 
ture of crossing the seas and seeing a new 
land they can scarcely wait. And then, just 
like in any white regiment, we had our minor- 
ity quota of those who had thought about the 
war before coming to camp, who believed in 
the justice of our cause and that it was their 
duty as Americans to fight. 

To be sure, they are not entirely like white 
troops. They must be officered differently. 
The discipline must be iron. Let down the 
bars a bit and they'll come cavorting through 
like a bevy of calves. One must give all sol- 
diers a square deal. But one must let the 
Negro soldier know that he is getting a square 
deal. For he is often suspicious. We choose 
some of the best among them and put them 
into a Non- Commissioned Officers' school. A 
few days after the selection was made one no- 
ticed an uneasiness in the battery. Some of 
the men seemed to have lost their punch. They 
drilled listlessly. An investigation to learn 
what had so unexpectedly injured their morale 
disclosed that the Buffalo men in the battery 
believed they were being discriminated against 
in favor of the men from Syracuse. Had not 



158 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

seven Syracuse "rookies" been put into the 
**Non-Com" School against only five fro^i 
Buffalo? That situation was not put to sleep 
until the men from both cities were called into 
the mess hall and convinced that all we were 
looking for was "results." 

Every battery is bound to turn up its bully. 
One comes to mind — Big Judson, by name. 
Judson was a husky porter, who seemed ob- 
sessed with the idea that the mantle of Jack 
Johnson had descended upon his shoulders. 
Put on "kitchen police" one day — cleaning 
pots for the cook and peeling his potatoes — 
Big Judson ran amuck. Slamming a pot on 
the floor, he started to walk out. 

"Come back yere, nigger!" called the cook. 

Big Judson looked incredulous. "Say, looka 
yere, niggah," he brawled, "where Ah comes 
from dey calls mah kind bad coons." 

"Let me tell yo' sumptin', nigger," the cook 
bawled at him. "Where Ah comes from dey 
calls yo' kind Sweet Marie." And the fight 
was on. Also, Big Judson got it. 

The first time we put them on sentry duty 
there was trouble. We pounded into them the 
fact that on post they were boss. We ordered 
one of them to guard a pile of coal that had 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 159 

been dumped along a spur of railroad track 
fronting our regiment — a reserve pile for 
emergency needs. Sporting a big axe handle, 
Private Wallington tramped up and down 
glaring at any one who approached the coal. 
He had been told not to let a soldier or officer 
take coal from that pile without written per- 
mission, and nobody would — not if he knew it. 
Late in the afternoon there came a frantic 
message from a Captain of the regiment next 
door : 

"For God's sake, call off that sentry of 
yours! We sent two of our men over to get 
coal and he laid them both out with an axe 
handle." 

It developed that our sentry had seen sol- 
diers going at a coal pile down the road. All 
coal piles looked alike to him, and going after 
the two poor privates of another regiment, 
brandishing his axe handle and bellowing 
fiercely, he had driven them off. The orders 
of the outraged Captain of the two privates 
he had scorned, informing him: "Ah takes 
orders from mah Capt'n, an' no one else" 

One night when the Officer of the Day 
made his rounds inspecting the sentries on post 
between midnight and dawn, he found one 



160 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

poor fellow on guard over an empty row of 
barracks with his teeth chattering. As the 
Officer of the Day had approached the post, 
he had waited in vain for "Halt! Who's 
there?" to ring out. Instead, he heard some- 
thing like a groan, and, hurrying forward, he 
found the sentry with both hands flung over 
his head. "Oh — h-h," he wailed, "Jesus hab 
mercy on mah soul!" 

"What's the matter with you. Private Per- 
kins?" asked the Officer of the Day. The 
negro gulped. His eyes opened wide. He 
tried to speak, tried again. Cautiously he 
walked around the officer, peering at him. 

"Oh, it's yo,' Lieutenant! God be praised!" 

"What's the matter with you?" repeated the 
officer. 

"Lieutenant," whispered Private Perkins, 
"dey's been some one a-knockin' at dat bar- 
racks door all night. The boys was sayin' how 
they hears a workman wuz killed in dere 'bout 
a month ago. And Ah jes' natcherly hears 
him a-knockin'." 

"Rubbish, Private Perkins!" said the Lieu- 
tenant. "There are no ghosts." 

"Don't say that. Lieutenant," warned the 
private, looking over his shoulders. "Yo' is 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 16l 

an oiBcer, but dat makes no differential to a 
ghost." 

But we have only a few like that. Out of 
the entire battery only ten per cent, were 
found to be illiterates, unable to read or write. 
Xow they're attending, when off duty, a school 
organized by the Y. M. C. A. which has its 
shacks in the cantonments, for negro as well 
as for the white soldiers. 

They like the army food and when the cry 
"Come and get it" — the army's way of an- 
nouncing a meal is served — there is a mad 
stampede for the mess hall. At the door it 
magically becomes orderly, and one by one our 
colored boys file in, and, taking their place at 
table, stand at attention. Then, calling upon 
a different man each meal, the First Sergeant 
bawls out : "Private Jones will ask the Lawd's 
blessing on th' food we are about to receive." 
And Private Jones asks the blessing, where- 
upon they dive into the "chow" that former 
dining car cooks and two hotel cooks, all blown 
in by the draft, have prepared for them. 

From Qualification Record Cards that the 
men fill out I discovered that one rookie had 
been Chief Cook in a Buffalo hotel. I was 
congratulating myself on having discovered a 



162 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

potential Mess Sergeant, and sent for him. 
After outlining the nature of the work planned 
for him and the chance it gave him of winning 
a Sergeancy, I asked him what he thought 
of it. 

"Please, Captain," he begged, "don't go 
puttin' me in th' kitchen. Ah wants t' drill 
an' be a soldier — not a cook. Ah wants t' do 
mah drill good 'cause Ah thinks if Ah do, 
mebbe Ah gets a chance at th' new officers' 
training camp they'll be openin' fo' colored 
boys pretty soon." 

He was ambitious, sincere, and, having 
enough cooks without him, we gave him his 
chance to drill. And every day he's out there 
working like a fiend, his eyes fixed on that 
training camp for Negro Ofiicers which may or 
may not come. 

For just as white officers were made at the 
R. O. T. C. camps of 1917, so were there 
negro officers. Their camp was at Des 
Moines, and to us from there came all our 
lieutenants. Some artillery regiments of the 
Ninety-second Division have no white officers 
of lower rank than Captain. With extreme 
care, the material for the Des Moines camp 
must have been chosen, for there came to us a 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 163 

fine, snappy quota of lieutenants. Non-Com- 
missioned officers from the crack cavalry and 
infantry regiments of our Regular Army were 
detailed to the Des Moines Camp; likewise 
negro lawyers, school teachers, highly intelli- 
gent men from government departments. One 
of our lieutenants has completed his work for 
a Harvard M.A. degree, another never grad- 
uated from grammar school, but he did gradu- 
ate from the cavalry school of the Regular 
Army, and when he says ''Aiten-shunrj atten- 
tion it is, with no nonsense. 

Watch these Lieutenants take the men out 
to drill. "One — two — three — four!" their hob- 
nailed field shoes beating out a rumble to the 
count. "Ke^p your eyes off the ground!" 
There they go now, with chins high, the sense 
of rhythm which by birth is theirs, keeping the 
whole column in an even swing, pretty to look 
upon. And now they're at the guns. "Can- 
oneers — Posts!" To their positions beside the 
dull steel three-inchers they dart. "Prepare 
for action !" With catlike grace they glide this 
way and that — a clink as the breach is opened, 
a clash as the top shield is lifted. 

And one looks into the future, and sees the 
scarred face of France, the low ridges of the 



164, OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

trenches, the blackened skeletons of trees, the 
earth pockmarked with the holes of the shells, 
and one sees there, in a field of Alsace, swiftly 
moving about one of our eager field guns, our 
Negro Artillerymen. The air shakes and quiv- 
ers with the passing of the shells, but they heed 
it not. Their minds are on the gun, and that 
alone. They were schooled in that in canton- 
ment. "Battery two rounds — 3200!" a Lieu- 
tenant shouts. Like fiends they work, speak- 
ing no word. A rattle as the shrapnel is 
turned in the fuse setter; the clash of the 
breech shutting — "Fire!" And 'way out there 
— four quick dabs of shrapnel smoke, like 
floating cotton. And then our Infantry going 
up under our barrage, our Infantry of the 
Ninety-second grinning in that terrible way 
that the Hun first came to fear in the Sen- 
galese troops of France. "Give them hell, 
boys! Remember San Juan!" 

Nor will they forget the goal that our Negro 
soldiers of '98 set them — our boys of the 
Ninety- Second Division. 



CHAPTER VIII 



"what our soldiers like" 



After a man has worn the uniform for a 
time, his likes and dislikes are re-born. What 
pleased him when he was a civilian no longer 
always pleases him. What he disliked when 
he was at home he now often likes. His tastes 
have undergone as decided a change as has his 
body in response to the military training. Now 
if you would understand the man in uniform, 
you must get on the inside and understand in 
what way he has changed. If you would un- 
derstand him, you must come to know the kind 
of letters he likes to receive, and the kind that 
give him a pain. There are songs he likes and 
songs he loathes. There are books he likes and 
books he tosses aside without even opening 
a cover. There are speeches he likes and 
speeches that make him writhe. There is food 
he likes and food he regards in scorn. There 
are things folks send him that fill him with joy 

165 



166 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

and things that leave him with a sort of empty 
feeling. There are officers he likes and officers 
he dislikes. 

The arrival of the mail in a National Army 
Cantonment is a big event. The soldiers line 
up and as their names are called they step out 
to receive their letters and packages. It is 
always the occasion of good-natured banter- 
ing. Those who do not receive mail pretend 
that they are in a terrible rage. A soldier who 
draws down three or four letters is a subject 
for an hour's kidding. One day, not so long 
ago, a soldier who had come in from a hard 
morning's drill, heard his name called out for 
mail and was happy. Gleefully obtaining his 
letter, he sprawled off on his bunk to read it. 
As he read, he scowled ; for the rest of the day 
he had a grouch. Always a good, conscien- 
tious worker, there was a change in that sol- 
dier during the afternoon's drill. His Captain 
noticed it and ordered him into the company 
office. Now it is part of the Captain's job to 
keep his eye on every man under him, and if a 
soldier seems discontented to learn instantly 
the reason for it. Questioning developed the 
fact that the soldier had gone to pieces because 
of the letter he had received from home. 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 167 

"Captain," he said, "that's what was sent me 
to read," and he showed his superior the let- 
ter, which read: 

"My Dear^ Darling Boy: 

"Things are terrible. God must be punish- 
ing the world for its wickedness. Do you still 
smoke cigarettes, Bob? We are not allowed 
to buy very much sugar. Tommy has been out 
of school for a week with a bad cold. I am 
not feeling very well, and your father slipped 
the other morning on the pavement and turned 
his ankle — although he told me not to say any- 
thing about it to you. If the war keeps on, I 
suppose I won't be able to get sugar to put up 
preserves. I don't see what the army has to 
have you for when I see lots of other young 
men walking the streets and going about their 
w^ork just as if there wasn't any war. The 
butcher was telling me the other morning that 
soon we won't be able to buy much pork, that 
they've got to send it all to Europe. The war 
is certainly a terrible thing. We were foolish 
to have gone into it. Only the other morning 
the delicatessen man was saying we'd never 
beat the Germans. I can't understand how 
you were ever so crazy as to want to become a 
soldier. Lovingly, 

"Mother." 

That kind of letter the soldier calls a "belly 



168 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

ache." It does no good. It causes the soldier 
much unnecessary worry, and more than often 
it makes him thoroughly out of patience. We 
are going through the period that France went 
through in the early part of the war. Then 
it was the civilian population in France that 
complained; not the soldiers. That gave rise 
to an expression in the French Army, "We 
will win if the civilians hold out." Now the 
soldier doesn't get any more sugar than you 
do, but he conserves it. Compare what you 
use and what he uses. For every gallon of 
coffee that is made in the army seven ounces 
of sugar are allowed. No sugar is put on the 
table; the coffee is sweetened before it comes 
to the table. So you see the effect a complain- 
ing letter has upon him. He knows that he is 
working like the very devil, and that his offi- 
cers are too. He knows he is living in a day 
when sacrifices have to be made. So don't, 
when you write him, fill your letter with little 
complaints of that sort. Don't write anything 
that isn't cheerful. If there's bad news, keep 
it to yourself. He's got enough to bother 
with. He's got a song that he loves to sing. 
It runs: "Pack all your troubles in your old 
kit bag, and smile! smile! smile!" 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 169 

One hears soldiers singing that when they 
come in after three hours' marching cross- 
country, over fences and dog tired. Smile, 
smile, smile! — that's the thing. Smile in your 
letters, if you care to bring happiness to those 
of whom you think enough to write. Don't 
tell your soldier that he is a hero. He hates 
that. Don't indulge in "spread-eagle" pa- 
triotism in your letters if you would refrain 
from giving him a pain. He doesn't need to 
be taught patriotism. He's got it. 

Rather the most popular kind of a letter 
supplies the thing he is crazy for — news. Give 
him little bits of news of the people he knows, 
their goings and comings. Nothing is too 
trivial to retell. Don't think that you're going 
to make him envious of your good times. They 
paint the picture of a day to which he looks 
forward — the day he goes home on furlough. 

Now to the cantonments comes another kind 
of a letter. One such came to cantonment in 
a daintily perfumed envelope that fell into the 
clutches of an ex-teamster, now an artillery 
"swing driver." Unbelievingly he read: 

"My Soldier Boy: 

"After finishing this letter, I am going 
down and buy a newspaper, and the name of 



170 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

the first soldier I see in print — well, that's you 
— I am going to address and post that letter 
to you. I have never met you. But you don't 
think I am doing anything wrong, do you? 
Of course I am not signing this with my real 
name. But if you want me to write to you 
often, just reply to the address given below. 
Do 5^ou want me to tell you how the country 
looks down here in Dixie? or do you want me 
to write you love letters, very warm and thrill- 
ing? What harm would it be? You would 
never see me. My mother would say that this^ 
was indiscreet, but I love to be indiscreet. 
Don't you — oh, my soldier boy? . . . 

The letter ran on that way for six pages. 
The soldier who got it said something like 
*'Oh, hell!" and proceeded to read it aloud to 
some of his "bunkies." Upon it they took 
council: "Bet she's a blonde. Bill." 
"Naw. Those light-haired babies are ice- 
bergs." 

"Sure," Sammy agreed, "the bird who wrote 
that had lots of pep." 

"Well, let's answer it." 

"Sure, make it a daisy." 

Need one record that it was "some answer" 
and that one silly, romantic girl was cured? 
She never wrote again to "her soldier boy." 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 171 

Which brings us to the question of writing 
to soldiers whom .you don't know and who for 
reasons best known to yourself you would fain 
cheer up. There is a considerable amount of 
such correspondence. But if you don't want 
to bore your soldier, don't fill it with a lot of 
sentimental nonsense. He tires of that just as 
quickly as he tires of hash. That kind of letter 
from a girl to a soldier she doesn't know, a 
heritage from France at war, is all right and 
the soldier appreciates it and studiously an- 
swers — if he thinks he isn't writing to a "nut." 
Then again soldiers steer clear of these wild 
love letters from girls whom they have never 
met. I know of a case of a soldier who re- 
ceived one and wrote the most endearing re- 
ply. A week later he got a letter from some 
former comrades who had been transferred to 
another camp. Their letter ended up with 
some warm quotation from his own letter to 
the supposed girl. For the girl letter he had 
received was a fake devised by his former com- 
rades, nothing more than a cruel practical 
joke. To make it worse, they tipped off some 
of the fellows in his own company, with the 
result that the poor soldier got an awful kid- 
ding about the longing he had to "meet a girl 



172 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

as sweet as you." He came to be called "Love 
and Kisses." Sting him just once and the 
soldier gets awfully careful. So, after all, the 
good crisp, newsy letter is the thing — if you 
don't know him well enough to write the other 
and quite desirable kind. Which, when they 
come from the right person, are as welcome as 
the double issue of blankets on a cold night. 

We had a speaker come to camp. He was 
a very good speaker. Indeed, he was what 
one would call an orator. He understood how 
to bring a catch into his voice, how to let his 
eyes seem to grow moist, how to straighten up 
and thunder. He was a man very prominent 
in public life. Thousands of soldiers had 
packed into the auditorium to hear him. 
After talking for fifteen minutes without say- 
ing anything, he paused, and said: "Boys, I 
envy you. I wish I were with you." (T heard 
the soldier whisper: "If he wants to be in the 
army so bad, I guess they'd let him enlist.") 
"Boys, you're going over to France, and some 
of 5^ou are not coming back." Every soldier in 
the hall glared at him. Soldiers don't want to 
be told that they are going to "get it." That 
is a subject they never discuss; that's mutually 
taboo. They become fatalists sooner or later. 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 17S 

and their expression is, "in luck" and "out of 
luck." If you "get it," you're "out of luck." 
That's all the attention on the surface they pay 
to "it." So the speech which tells them that 
they are going to lay down their lives in a 
noble cause makes them thoroughly sick. 
Also, they detest the "spread-eagle" speech, 
for they are quick to detect the sincere from 
the insincere. When they hear a civilian rant- 
ing to them about the sacrifices they must 
make and all, etc., the first thought that comes 
to them is: "Why isn't that guy in uniform?" 

Soldiers want facts. They think in facts, 
work in facts, their life is fact. 

We had a high officer of the British Army 
speak to the men. He spoke for an hour and 
a half, and held their interest every minute. 
When he finished there was a thunder of ap- 
plause. He talked to the men in their own 
language, told them things they wanted to 
know, answered a hundred of their unspoken 
questions. He didn't flatter them once. He 
scrupulously refrained from telling them what 
fine young men they were. He was the most 
popular man who had ever spoken to them. 
As an example of what interests a soldier : 

"Men," he said, "your officers have told you 



174. OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

that you must always be neat and clean. Let 
me tell you why your officers insist on that. 
At the start of the war we English were going 
to be very clever, so we took the brass buttons 
off the soldiers' uniforms, the buttons they 
liked, and we covered them with a preparation 
that made them dark. That was our big idea. 
They couldn't any longer reflect the sun and 
betray our position to the Hun. That meant 
the soldiers didn't have to polish their buttons 
any more. Right ! 

"Before we realized it, that freedom from 
polishing spread to the soldiers' feet. They 
got careless about their shoes. Then after 
looking at their feet, if they saw a stain on 
their pants they said: *0h, we look dirty, any- 
how; what's the use of bothering about our 
breeches?' And then they got careless about 
shaving, and then in the trenches one day Bill 
looked over at his comrade Jack. Jack's uni- 
form was spotted. He had been several days 
without a shave, and Bill thought: 

" *I wonder if I look like that dirty, disrep- 
utable bum over there? I wonder if a beggar 
like that will ever get up nerve enough to go 
over the top when the order comes ?' 

"And as Bill looked at his comrade he shook 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 175 

his head dubiously. Before we knew it, that 
feeling had reached our whole army. The 
men began to attack like bums. Bums, I said. 
Right! 

"So we had all the blackened buttons taken 
off our soldiers' uniforms and the brass ones 
put back on, and then we issued an order say- 
ing that every man was to have his buttons 
polished, his shoes shined, his clothes cleaned, 
and his face shaved every day. It made all 
the difference in the world. They began to 
fight like men instead of like bums. 

"And I'll tell you something else, men: 
You've heard a lot about the charming girls 
of France. Now when you go over there those 
French girls will have eyes on you. TheyiU 
want to size you up. But Mademoiselle has 
seen loads of soldiers march by. She is a 
pretty good judge by now. I want to warn 
you, men, the girls of France are very charm- 
ing, but they are very critical — oh, very criti- 
cal. In three years they have seen lots of sol- 
diers — ^lots of soldiers." 

That made a big laugh. Soldiers like to 
laugh. 

Now the officers that a soldier likes are 
strangely enough those officers who know their 



176 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

business and who hold him right up to the 
mark. They like the officer who every once 
in a while shows them that he is human. Now, 
when a soldier is at "Attention" in ranks, he 
may not utter a sound or move. When the 
command "Rest!" is given, he may smoke, 
sing, do anything he wants. One day, at a 
very formal ceremony, the Corporals were re- 
porting their squads to the Captain. The Cor- 
poral of the first squad reported: "Sir, one 
private absent." The Corporal of the second 
squad: "Sir, all present." The Corporal in 
the third squad was a new man who was being 
tried out — an Irishman with a brogue that you 
could cut with a knife. He made his report 
this way: 

"Captain, I have had the devil's own time 
locatin' me men. Now Flaherty, he do be in 
the kitchen peelin' potatoes. Hogan, he be 
over to the hospital. But I'm thinkin' there's 
a bit of blarney, to Hogan's bein' sick. Jones 
is out diggin' a trench like any dago — ^bad cess 
to thim ! And the other three laddy bucks, the 
diwul knows where they are." 

The Captain was almost convulsed with 
laughter, but kept his face straight. Out of 
the corner of his eye he saw that the men were 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 177 

having an awful time of it, clenching their 
teeth to keep from bursting out laughing. In- 
stantly he shouted at them the command 
*'Rest!" and the whole battery broke into one 
shout at the Irishman. 

That was only a little thing, but it helped 
that officer to win his men. If he had held 
them there at "Attention!" he would have lost 
a beautiful and logical chance for him to show 
them that he was human, ready to join in a 
laugh with them. 

It is a strange thing, but the man in the 
ranks will very generally like his Captain 
much better than his Lieutenants. That is 
because some Lieutenants look so very young 
• — the "shave tails." The men sometimes get 
an idea that their Sergeants are just as good^ 
if not better, than some of their Lieutenants. 
They are invariably wrong in this opinion, but 
they somehow seem to reach it just the same, 
whereas such a thing never enters their head 
about a Captain. The higher rank gives them 
a great trust in him. They seem to think that 
the Captain has their welfare more at heart. 
They see him going in the kitchen and tasting 
the food they eat. They know he is ready at 
all times to listen to any grievance they may 



178 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

feel. They've got lots of confidence in him. 
They don't like the officer who will not give 
them a "square deal." Of course in a great 
army there are bound to be such. Not many 
in ours. 

They don't like the officer who everlastingly 
divides life into two parts, black and white. 
They don't like the officer who will not make 
allowances for circumstances. 

I know of a Captain who was confronted 
with a "black and white" situation, an un- 
avoidable occurrence preventing a deserving 
soldier from getting his name on the pass list 
for ten o'clock, who went to see the Colonel of 
the regiment to get special permission for that 
man to go away. The soldiers gossiped, the 
incident was repeated around the company; 
and the men got an idea that their Captain 
would look after them. They became loyal to 
him. A highly desirable thing — a most val- 
uable asset when they go under fire for the 
first time. 

The soldier likes the officer who gives him a 
square deal. He likes the officer who looks 
after his food, or "chow," as he calls it. He 
likes the officer who makes sure that his men 
have enough blankets, who will not overwork 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 179 

them unless there is necessity for it, who lets 
his men come to him for information and ad- 
vice. They do not like the officer who plays 
favorites, who is careless at drill, who shows 
up looking a bit sloppy, who goes around the 
whole time with an expressionless face, who is 
lever known to smile. They like the officer 
who talks to them in the language that they all 
understand. They detest the officer who is 
sarcastic at their expense, or who makes a fool 
out of a man. That is one unforgivable thing 
to make a fool out of a man before his com- 
rades — no matter how dumb he may be. The 
average soldier would rather get a smash in 
the face than to be made fun of in the presence 
of his "bunkies." 

The soldiers don't like an officer who seems 
to shirk his work. They don't like an officer 
who gives commands in a low tone. It con- 
fuses them. They have difficulty in under- 
standing what he wants. They don't like an 
officer who has a casual air, who gives his com- 
mands in a leisurely way. They like an officer 
with snap and dash, who gives his commands 
in a tone loud enough for them all to hear. 
When they are being instructed, they don't 
like to be kept standing, if it's a lecture. They 



180 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

become inattentive. They don't like to listen 
to long-winded explanations. They like the 
officer who lets them learn as much as possible 
by using their eyes instead of their ears, who 
will demonstrate to them a piece of mechanism 
on a field gun; for example, who will show 
them how it is operated and then instantly sit 
them down and make them operate it. They 
like to get their hands on mechanism, like the 
breech block, or quadrant of a field gun. They 
like to get the feel of the thing. They hate 
having to be told all about it and to be ex- 
pected to remember what they have been told. 
They much prefer a short, concise explanation 
and then having the thing turned over to them 
at once. 

They like the officer who deals in the practi- 
cal not in the theoretical. With the one they 
are attentive, with the other inattentive. Fur- 
thermore, they want to be told things in a lan- 
guage they can all understand. Now quite a 
scientific thing is the principle of "enfilade" 
fire. I heard a Lieutenant, who understood 
enfilade fire thoroughly, talk to the men about 
it for half an hour. He had been extremely 
scientific, painstakingly accurate in his ex- 
planation, yet it was filled with weighty words, 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 181 

it was heavy. A Captain questioned the men 
at the end of that period about enfilade fire, 
and they hadn't gotten it. The Captain then 
told them a story. He said: "There was an 
old Irishman who noticed twelve partridges 
coming every day to his farm? He had a rifle 
and only one cartridge. He was at his wits' 
end how to get the twelve partridges with only 
one cartridge. He thought it out. One day 
he took out his gun and hid it behind the hay- 
stack. Then he got a bag of corn and he put 
the corn on the ground in a straight line lead- 
ing to the haystack. He loaded his rifle with 
the one cartridge, hid behind the haystack and 
waited. 

Pretty soon the partridges came, found 
the corn, and all lined up in a single line 
eating it. He had placed the corn so that they 
would be strung right out in a straight line. 
You've got that now? They are all in one 
straight line eating this corn, and the Irishman 
hiding behind the haystack, and he's got one 
bullet. 

"So he sticks his head around the corner 
and aims at the end bird. The other birds are 
right in line with the bird he aims at. He 
fires, cracks the first bird, the bullet goes 



182 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

through him, hits the next, and so on. Well, 
he didn't get all twelve, but he got ten. Men, 
that is enfilade fire. Do you get it?" 

Everybody got.it. 

"Now," the Captain went on, "when you 
want to get a body of the enemy under en- 
filade fire, you do just that. You get your 
gun in a position where you can shoot at them 
from the side, and you do it because you can 
cover just so many more of them than if you 
were shooting from the front. Now think of 
the twelve partridges, when I tell you this. 
When your shrapnel shell bursts, it throws two 
hundred and fifty bullets down on the ground. 
Those bullets take the form of a shower which 
is two hundred yards long, twenty yards 
wide. Now, if you're firing at your enemy's 
infantry, and he is coming up in one line, 
you're only covering twenty yards of that line 
if you shoot on him directly from the front. 
But get your guns on the side of him and 
you're covering two hundred yards of his line 
— like the Irishman and the partridges. Got 
it?" 

They all had it. Now soldiers like that kind 
of instruction. They do not like the memo- 
rized words of a military textbook thrown at 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 183 

them. They like the thing demonstrated with 
an anecdote, if necessary^ so that even the most 
stupid among them can understand it. 

We've got to know the. kind of songs they 
like. We raised money to buy a talking ma- 
chine for them and records. We ordered 
twenty records to start with. One day when 
we looked at the table where the machine was 
kept in their bunk room we found three rec- 
ords were in a pile covered with dust. Obvi- 
ously they had not been used. They were a 
violin solo by a great violinist, "Annie Laurie" 
and "Send Me Away with a Smile." Im- 
mensely popular were "Good-bye, Broadway; 
Hello, France," "Over There," all of Sousa's 
marches, and all kinds of ragtime. But they 
did not like the classical music, weepy things, 
and sentimental songs. One forgets there is 
another record, but it was broken. We always 
suspected them of that. It was a monologue 
by some vaudeville comedian. 

They like books — books about the war — you 
wouldn't think that? They devour them. 
Empey's "Over the Top" is an enormous fa- 
vorite. They like good stirring tales of ad- 
venture ; a few went in for the sexy magazine 
story, all of which kinds of magazines we have 



184 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

since weeded out and refused admittance to 
the barracks — for obvious reasons. They like 
writers of the Robert Louis Stevenson, Rich- 
ard Harding Davis type. The soldier libraries 
report a big demand for those authors. 

Now army food gets the soldier in the habit 
for good wholesome food. He loses his taste 
for the frills of eating. He wants good food, 
well cooked, and lots of it. He gets that. 
Prom military authorities a request has been 
put out to the population in general not to 
send food to the soldiers. It is not needed in 
the camps. Invariably there come hard-boiled 
eggs which go off, due to the long time they 
had been in transit by the parcels post and due 
to the changeable heat conditions they en- 
counter. Likewise, cake goes stale and is more 
or less unpalatable, by the time it reaches the 
soldier. What the soldier likes is plenty of 
sweets. They never begin .to get enough 
candy. Now only a small percentage of the 
men in the National Army were in the habit 
in civilian life of consistently drinking. They 
do not get their nip now. Doctors will tell 
you that when a man gives up drinking he 
craves sweets. So, in the National Army you 
find some few former booze-hoisters getting 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 185 

their hands on all the candy within reach, and 
you've got the other men wanting candy to 
put an edge on the day-in, day-out solid sub- 
stantiality of their food. 

So if you want to send a soldier something, 
send him candy, or send him sweet crackers in 
boxes. Don't send him loose cake, which only 
gets stale, or crushed or becomes very crumby 
around his bunk. Don't send him fruit, which 
only decays easily in transit and gets him a 
call-down at "Saturday inspection" if he is 
caught with it around quarters. Fruit that 
has been exposed and which is just about 
ready to go off invariably breeds flies. For an 
officer to see flies in the barracks is like waving 
a red flag in front of a Mexican bull. Sweets 
that will keep, and tobacco — that soldier loves 
them. 

He hasn't an}^ need for fine handkerchiefs, 
or silk socks, or colored linen shirts. The Gov- 
ernment gives him socks, but one can never 
have too many pairs. Send him woollen hel- 
mets, wristlets, scarfs. He gets sleeveless 
sweaters through the Red Cross and through 
various organizations from his home town. 
He likes to receive practical things — tooth 
powder, shaving soap, safety razor blades. He 



186 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

is required to keep well shaven, and officers 
insist that the men brush their teeth frequent- 
ly for reasons of health. All these things have 
to come out of his own pocket. 

The little khaki writing kits and toilet kits 
are most useful. A man with a fountain pen 
is always lucky. It's hard to keep an ink bot- 
tle around your bunk. Sooner or later it's 
bound to be knocked over, and a good bath- 
robe is going to be smeared. Woollen 
pajamas are highly desirable. The little 
trench mirrors, unbreakable, are quite popular 
with the men. A pair of sheepskin-lined 
slippers, that he can wear going out to the 
showers and around quarters at night. Not 
forgetting his home town newspaper. He al- 
ways likes that. Unless he happens to be 
from a big city, right near a camp, he cannot 
get it unless you send it to him. 

Our men in the cantonment are ready to go 
to France. The overwhelming majority of 
them are eager to start. They don't mind the 
hard work. They've adjusted their moods to 
it, and are playing the game. The one big 
thing that everybody fights so hard to over- 
come is that touch of homesickness. The little^ 
letter full of news from home, not complaints ; 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 187 

the little box once in a while, not costly, just 
a few crackers or smokes — they are big things. 
The m.an who receives a box from home is at 
once an object of envy on the part of all his 
"bunkies." To see the way they nurse those 
gifts would give you a thousand pleasures if 
you had sent one.* Try it. 



CHAPTER IX 



"the west point of our civilian army" 



The lives of the men in the vast National 
Army called to the colors are in the hands of 
a new type of officer. Likewise their health, 
morals, spiritual forces and fighting efficiency. 
Obviously an enormous responsibility, both to 
the men whom they command and to our coun- 
try who commands them. Hurling, as we are, 
regiment upon regiment into the battle front 
of our Allies, the responsibility of each of 
these officers who has come out of the Reserve 
Officers' Training Camps becomes stupendous. 
Upon their fitness for war the decision rests. 
Are the conquering dreams of Germany's in- 
sane "military party" to become realized, or 
is the world to be made safe for democracy? 
With France bled horribly, with the man pow- 
er of Great Britain heavily drafted, with Rus- 
sia out of the war, it is the bare truth that our 
cause depends upon the new National Army. 

188 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 189 

What of the men who will officer it? For an 
army cannot rise above its officers. Are these 
new officers fitted for their tasks? 

Earlier in the war I was a correspondent in 
the field with the armies of the enemy. I en- 
deavored to make the best of this opportunity 
to learn where Germany was weak. It was 
impressed upon me, the "efficiency" and "iron 
discipline" of the Kaiser's legions, and in con- 
sidering our new officer corps, I bear that in 
mind. One is measuring the men who in Au- 
gust of 1917 were commissioned in the Reserve 
Officers' Training Camps, with the efficiency 
of the enemy, of the ruthless Teutonic war 
machine. And the comparison does not dis- 
courage — the contrary. 

Let us first gather some conception of the 
enormity of the proposition, this raising and 
training an army vast enough to overturn the 
scales in Europe, crushing the Kaiser and his 
legions. Brigadier General Upton in his 
ruthlessly true book, "The Military Policy of 
the United States," says that to send troops 
into battle led by inefficient officers is little 
short of murder. In Europe, I have seen such 
officers lead their men into cul de sacs and 
slaughter pens, and I know General Upton's 



190 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

words to be truth. I have seen them drama- 
tized in blood in Russia and in France. 

Now when we awoke and warred with Ger- 
many, we were short of officers for our Regu- 
lar Army, let alone having enough for the vol- 
unteers who brought it up to war strength. 
And where were the officers coming from to 
train and subsequently lead into battle the 
huge new National Army, the levy of which 
would begin on September 1, 1917, from a 
drafting list of ten million Americans between 
the ages of twenty-one and thirty? Just how 
many officers our Regular Army was short 
and how many retired officers were available 
to fill the gaps I am not at liberty to state ; but 
a shortage there was. By rushing graduation 
classes, West Point could give but a compara- 
tive handful, and its men were badly needed 
in the Regular Army. Where, then, to get 
ten thousand "line" officers for half a million 
drafted men? 

It was solved by the establishment of a 
West Point for our civilian army. It was the 
^'Plattsburg idea." In 1915 patriotic civilian 
and far-sighted military men, realizing our ap- 
palling shortage of officers, should war ever 
come, obtained permission from the War De- 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 191 

partment to use Plattsburg Barracks as a sum- 
mer training camp site. Attendance was vol- 
untary. A "camp" lasted one month. There 
were June, July and August camps. A man 
paid his railroad fares, his board, and bought 
his uniform. The government furnished use 
of quarters, rifles, ammunition and instructors. 
This voluntary camp was again opened in 
1916. It was given a new stimulus by Con- 
gress creating the Officers' Reserve Corps, in 
which one could be commissioned by passing a 
prescribed examination. Many men in 1916 
who attended the Plattsburg camp took the 
O. R. C. examination. April of 1917 brought 
war. We needed a huge army, but first offi- 
cers for that army. So the "Plattsburg Idea" 
was enlarged into the "West Point of Our 
Civilian Army." 

This found us, a month after war was de- 
clared, with Reserve Officers' Training Camps 
located throughout our country. The camps 
were at Plattsburg Barracks, Madison Bar- 
racks, Fort Niagara, Fort Myer, Fort Ogle- 
thorpe, Fort McPherson, Fort Benjamin 
Harrison, Fort Sheridan, Fort Logan H. 
Roots, Fort Snelling, Fort Riley, Leon 
Springs and the Presidio of San Francisco. 



192 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

And when in mid- August they closed, other 
camps opened, graduated their classes, re- 
opened, and so on — as our army grew and 
grew. Collectively, that is the "West Point" 
for the new army. 

The work at these camps was early stand- 
ardized. In a letter from Adjutant General 
McCain to the Department Commanders of 
the United States, he said: "The course of in- 
struction will be based on the course now pro- 
vided for provisional Second Leutenants (ci- 
vilian candidates for Regular Army Commis- 
sions) at Fort Leavenworth, and the courses 
prescribed for newly appointed British and 
Canadian officers. The first month in camp 
will be devoted to basic Infantry instruction 
and instruction in those duties of officers that 
are common to all arms. At the end of the 
month those in attendance will be classified on 
the basis of past experience, aptitude, etc., and 
prorated among the arms (Infantry, Cavalry, 
Field Artillery, Coast Artillery, Engineers). 
The course for the last two months will be 
formulated accordingly." 

Thus the prospective officer at Plattsburg, 
on the shore of Lake Champlain, New York, 
received the same instruction as the young Cal- 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 19S 

ifornian out in San Francisco's Presidio, or 
the Georgian at Fort Oglethorpe. Likewise, 
the type of men in these camps was standard- 
ized. Before being accepted as officer candi- 
dates, they had to pass rigid physical exam- 
inations and were looked over as to mentality, 
bearing and general adaptability. Thus in 
writing of what went on in the Madison Bar- 
racks Camp on Lake Ontario, one writes of 
what transpired at Fort Sheridan, near Chi- 
cago, or in any of the other twelve camps 
where men for the Officers' Reserve Corps 
were being made. 

War brings two classes of men first to the 
front. One is the gi'oup that pauses, weighs 
the situation, realizes that all they have in life 
is due to the government under which they 
live, and forthwith offer their services to it in 
its hour of need. The other is the group — 
likewise with its patriotic foundations — which 
looks upon war somewhat in the light of a lark, 
likes to wear a uniform, loves a fight, seeks ad- 
venture. The members of this latter group 
are the very young or the very rich, bored with 
a sterile life of country clubs and dances. 
From both groups good officers and inspiring 
leaders are drawn. A few others come for- 



194 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

ward, equally patriotic, who have always been 
seriously interested in the army as a profes- 
sion but never have been able to embrace it. 
Others believe conscription will eventually 
come, and preferring to go as officers, step for- 
ward; while a scant few come sordidly, being 
out of jobs and the "keep" for three months 
and pay appealing to them. 

Before going to Madison Barracks, I had 
this preconceived idea of what induced nearly 
two hundred thousand Americans to apply for 
admission into these training camps, to which, 
by the way, but forty thousand were admitted, 
and of whom hut one in four won line com- 
missions, I found upon talking with the men 
in my own and in other companies that this 
idea was correct. As one man who knew ab- 
solutely nothing of military things put it to 
me, "I realized we were in a serious business. 
I felt I ought to do my part — so I came up 
here." There was another man in the forties, 
well over the drafting age. I knew he was 
married. I had met his wife. "When the 
Spanish- American War came," he told me, 
"I volunteered. When this war came, I, of 
course, offered my services for what they were 
worth," and he added with a bit of admirable 




o 






o 



< 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 195 

pride: "My family has always done its bit." 
So did the officer candidates come to the 
camps. These camps were in charge of picked 
men of our small but amazingly efficient Reg- 
ular Army. To these camps were detailed 
picked officers as instructors. They were men 
who were specialists in their branches of the 
service; they were men who had instructed at 
West Point, whose names mean something in 
military circles; shrewd judges, too, of men — 
good psychologists. 

At their disposal were all the lessons of the 
European War — data gathered from all the 
battle fronts by that body which never sleeps, 
the War College of our General Staff. What 
the French and English had learned by bitter 
experience their commissions gave gladly to 
our military men in Washington. What the 
Germans and Austrians had likewise learned 
to their cost also was in the archives of our 
War College. Our military men detailed to 
the Central Powers before we entered the war 
had been on the job. So we have the unique 
situation of our country having a war forced 
upon it, but at its disposal all the up-to-the- 
minute truths of war learned by frightful loss 
of life on Europe's battlefields. And this 



196 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

knowledge has been imparted to the men who 
are now officering the National Army. 

That insignia, U. S. R., on the collars of 
men in khaki stands for something. It means 
United States Heserve and that the wearer is 
an officer commissioned by the President. But 
it means something more than that. It means 
that he is an efficient officer. It means that 
he has a commission because he has proved 
himself worthy of it. If there is an idea still 
lingering that to get a commission all a man 
had to do v/as to enroll in one of these camps 
in May and then use a little political pull, let 
it go by the boards. One knows better. 

I took the course at one of those training 
camps. I saw week after week, month after 
month, men dropped for inefficiency. I saw 
our own battery start with one hundred and 
seventy-four men, and at the end only fifty- 
four of them had won U. S. R. artillery com- 
missions. I know of a man who boasted of 
political pull who was dropped for failing and 
who tried "pull" to get reinstated, and that the 
*'puH" got him — nothing. One recalls that on 
the bulletin boards of all the camps were 
posted copies of a telegram from Washington. 
It gave notice that any one attempting to use 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 197 

"pull" would come to grief; and those who did 
try found the promise kept. So let us clear 
away an idea — if it exists — that these new of- 
ficers of the National Army hold commissions 
for any reason save that of efficiency. 

As to that efficiency; first, physically. The 
fat man, the underweight man, they are not 
desired. Under the terrific stress of war they 
become charges. They burden the hospital 
department. Often unable to be on hand when 
needed, they necessitate a shifting around of 
officers, causing a shortage at the front. They 
breed lack of discipline. So, not content with 
the first physical examination that all candi- 
dates had to pass before being enrolled in the 
training camps, the army medical authorities, 
midway through the course, ordered another 
test. Every candidate was examined a second 
time. Defects brought out by a month and a 
half of gruelling physical and mental work 
were revealed, and no matter how good the 
man's record, out he went if he could not pass 
the physical test. 

I have in mind an American, honorably dis- 
charged as a Captain from the Canadian army, 
a veteran of West Front campaigning. The 
medical test showed him not up to the mark. 



198 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

and he was at once dropped. A week later he 
visited camp in his Canadian uniform. He 
had been recommissioned in Toronto, but 
Uncle Sam did not want him. Not that per- 
sonally and as far as his ability went he was 
not desirable in every way, but physically he 
was oif . I record that to show how strict our 
War Department has made the qualifications 
for these new officers. I could tell of other 
men, fine specimens save for some one defect, 
men who pleaded with the medical ofiicers to 
pass them. But the rule was immutable. 

Consider now the character test to which 
these new officers were put: Most of them 
were accustomed to easy lives. They were 
men out of business life, their only exercise the 
golf club of the week-end ; also there were the 
younger men from the easy life of college, 
with habits of luxury, many of them. For 
three months they were compelled to rise at 
5 :40 in the morning, work steadily, physically 
and mentally, with but a brief hour out at 
meal time, until 9 :30 at night. They were al- 
lowed Saturday afternoons and Sundays to 
themselves — if they were foolish enough to 
take it. For to accomplish the work a man 
had to spend all his off time studying. Do 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 199 

you feel you could stick to that routine day 
after day for three months without ''going 
stale," without coming to detest it? Those 
who could stick are the men who are officers 
of the National Army to-day. 

Also, when the camps opened, orders were 
posted prohibiting drinking and gambling. I 
know of commissions that were lost because 
men did not place the desire to obey those or- 
ders above the desire to please themselves. 
Little things, so called, weeded out others. A 
man offered an office clerk five dollars if he 
would learn whether the Captain had recom- 
mended him for a commission. He was dis- 
charged from camp. A man went on one of 
those week-end trips with a girl, and he drew 
a discharge. Not because of the trip, one im- 
agines, but because he was heard to boast 
about it. Another man's conversation devel- 
oped German sympathy; the gate opened for 
him. All that shows pretty careful combing, 
and all the men in the camps were combed be- 
fore they received their commissions. 

.1 shall never forget one night in the bar- 
racks just before taps. In our company was a 
group of college boys, always singing, quite 
often rough-housing, brimming with young 



200 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

animal spirits. I had wondered if they com- 
prehended the seriousness of it all, what it 
meant, their being here training as officers. I 
began to tell them of the front, of the No 
Man's Land I had seen between the trenches; 
the fragments of things that used to be men 
dangling from the barbed wires, tossed there 
by the bursts of shells; of the thousands of 
men I had seen living like moles in the ground, 
in dugouts of muddy trenches; of the dead I 
had seen on a snowy Russian plain, their arms 
frozen in stiff gestures, like jumping- jacks. 
The college boys became serious. Then one 
of them gave a quick, nervous laugh and ex- 
claimed: "You know what they say: 'See 
Paris, and die!' " The others joined in the 
laugh. Then some one cried: "On to Paris! 
On to Berlin!" . . . Yes, they were the stuff. 
And behind them, as in a shadow, one saw 
thousands of the same kind of young French- 
men and young Englishmen, leaping over the 
tops of trenches and leading their men to the 
charge. Yes, he's quite valuable and quite 
wonderful in war, this young Lieutenant type. 
Into it he puts the same spirit that enables him 
to inspire his varsity eleven to hold on the 
three-yard line — like the young Canadians 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 201 

held at Ypres, like the French held at Verdun 
and the Marne! 

Now at the training camp it was a survival 
of the fittest. The end of the first month saw 
men dropped from every camp; the number 
totalled several thousand. By then any man 
who had come for sordid reasons — the board 
and money — was weeded out. Likewise, any 
who came, detesting military life but liable to 
service, wishing to go as officers ; likewise those 
who were quite young and did not take it seri- 
ously enough. Ukeleles and military text- 
books do not blend, and those who preferred 
wailing about the beach at Wee-Hai-Wee, 
when there were problems in the science of 
"combat patrols" to be worked out, why, they 
of course were given transportation back 
home. 

Day by day every man in that first month 
was checked up. It was noted if his shoes 
were shined at reveille and retreat; if he pre- 
sented a "neat, soldiery appearance." It was 
noted how he executed commands in ranks at 
drill, how he gave commands if called out to 
take charge of the company; if he talked in 
ranks, if he could stand long at attention with- 
out moving his head; if he yielded readily to 



202 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

f . . . 
discipline; how he answered at recitations. 

And, above all, if he had the idea of what he 

>vas talking about, not merely the memorized 

thoughts of a book page. 

In brief, his "adaptability" was day by day 
checked up. And those who did not take the 
course seriously, and who had no conception of 
the money that it was costing the government 
to give them this schooling, and who never 
thought that they were in duty bound to put 
forward their best efforts, they were the unfit. 
One does not mean to imply that all those who 
failed to qualify for commissions were dis- 
missed because they trifled with a serious prop- 
osition. Rather, they were men whose intent 
was right but who were hopeless physically or 
whose minds — and they were not stupid — 
could not be made to think in a military way. 

One was surprised at first to discover that 
the men at camp were being handled quite 
easily. Then one concluded that it was not 
the purpose of these camps to turn out troops 
capable of drilling like machines. The men 
were having things more or less put up to 
them. In other words, they were being given 
rope with which to hang themselves. The su- 
preme attitude presumed that they were in- 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 203 

telligent and mature and knew enough to act 
properly. If they failed to — well, they failed. 

As to their fitness to command — for a man 
could be perfect in studies and still not be fit 
to command. Discipline and the habits of life 
of a civilian — ^are they compatible? Most of 
the men who went to the camps were not used 
to military discipline. They got it. They ac- 
quiesced to it. They were willing to be taught 
how to obey. By being subjected to hard dis- 
cipline themselves they were made fit to ad- 
minister it. Picture a man in the thirties, who 
has made his way in the business world, be- 
ing told by a Lieutenant ten years his junior 
that he must sew his hat cord and not leave it 
free to slip around. Imagine the older man, 
accustomed in a business office to ordering sub- 
ordinates around, obeying the Lieutenant with- 
out hesitation. That happened a score of 
times. If the man could not obey he was not 
fit to command. In the field he would be apt 
to "know more" than his superiors. 

Then the ability to think quickly^ to issue 
orders, to exact swift obedience, to forget self- 
consciousness and to instruct men in a way 
that would hold their attention — those points 
were sought for in the camps, and in the men 



204 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

who were commissioned they were found. Day 
after day a different man would be called from 
the ranks. The instructor would order him to 
act as Captain. Then and there that man had 
to make good on the "ability to command." 
He had to keep thinking quickly to give the or- 
ders necessary to evolute the company into the 
formations that the instructor would demand. 
He had to issue his orders snappily, clearly 
and loudly. For it is a psychological truth 
that just as your delivery is in issuing or- 
ders, so are the men going to execute them.' 
The issuing of orders in a leisurely tone 
means that they are going to be executed in a. 
leisurely manner. And the National Army 
is being made into one of snap and dash. 

The man who got out in front of the com- 
pany and gave orders weakly, because the men 
were his bunk mates, failed. I recall one man 
called out to lead the company. Around quar- 
ters he was a most pleasant, witty, and agree-, 
able companion. Because he was such, some 
of the men in the company thought they could 
take things easy when he was called out to act 
as Captain, 

"When we're in the barracks," he bawled 
at them, as soon as a disposition to loaf was 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 205 

obvious, "you're Jack and I'm Bill. To-day 
I'm Captain and you fellows are here to obey 
my orders, and if you don't obey them as 
smartly as I think you ought to, I'll keep you 
drilling out here till your tongues hang out." 

Need one add that, everything else being up 
to the mark, he got his commission? 

The quality of holding the attention of men 
while instructing them was a quality much 
sought after. The United States Reserve Offi- 
cers are now instructing the National Army. 
From time to time in the training camp, men 
were called upon to conduct classes, and the 
way they did it, was carefully noted down by 
the instructor. It takes a good psychologist to 
hold the attention of men for an hour on a 
purely technical subject. But it can be done, 
by enlivenment, and those men who showed 
they could do it were rated high. Consider 
what an asset it is to be able to interest the 
men of the new National Army — the hun- 
dreds of thousands of men entirely ignorant 
.of military things — in the essentials of military 
science with which they have suddenly been 
brought face to face ! 

I know this of the artillery: If you interest 
the men in the horses, in the guns and what 



206 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

the guns are capable of, if you get them to like 
their horses and their equipment and to take 
care of them and perfect themselves in their 
use, you cannot help but have an interested 
battery. And if you know human nature as 
well as your branch of the military science you 
cannot but help attaining military efficiency. 

Yes, the Reserve Officers know their new 
profession. When they were commissioned 
they had learned enough of it to realize what 
an awful lot there is to learn. That is a good 
sign. For the man who knows little of mili- 
tary science invariably believes that he knows 
it all. A good measure of the Reserve Offi- 
cers are in the Field Artillery. Modern 
tactics have made it necessary that the Artil- 
lery Officer have quite a good idea of the way 
Infantry and Cavalry fight, as well as his own 
arm. You see, the Artillery to-day works in 
close co-operation with those other arms. The 
guns must help their Infantry and Cavalry on 
the attack and defense. Also, the good Artil- 
lery Officer must have an idea of how the 
enemy, the Germans, use their troops on de- 
fense and attack. So we in the Artillery have 
studied those things. 

Let me show you how shrewdly the brains 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 207 

of the United States military establishment 
worked that out. The camp course was three 
months. During the first month we in the ar- 
tillery never saw a field gun. We were infan- 
try. Then we dropped it and became artil- 
lerymen. But we did not forget the "dough- 
boys." Every so often, while immersed in the 
guns, we would receive a lecture on infantry 
and cavalry, by particularly proficient officers 
in those branches. 

We were given books prepared for the train- 
ing camps. The contents of these books were 
not assigned as lessons, but it was up to us to 
digest their contents in our spare hours. Those 
of us who did, made ourselves just that more 
efficient. And what wonder books those were ! 
One saw in them diagrams of how the Ger- 
man infantry attacked at Verdun. One 
thought of that formation in terms of artillery 
and figured out how best to decimate it with 
the fire of our guns. One learned how the 
English and French attacked. One had at 
one's disposal the translation of a most remark- 
able series of articles written for a German 
military publication by a German artillery 
major. They were lines brimming with val- 
uable lessons gained at bitter cost to him in the 



20B OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

field. And one gloated over the fact that there 
at least was once when the Kaiser's censorship 
had slipped in letting such valuable stuff get 
into print, where it could be seen by our alert 
and able military attaches in Europe and sent 
back to us. 

We were lectured on explosives and their 
use in the war to-day by an English inspector 
of ammunition in America. The point is that 
we did not waste any time with fluff. We 
did not study military history — which one does 
not mean to imply is fluff, but which is quite 
useless to us in our present work. What we 
needed and what we got was: Plow are they 
doing it in Europe? How can we better their 
methods? How, how, how? 

Practical instruction was the keynote, with 
just enough of the theory carried along to give 
us an understanding of why we were doing 
things that way. The theoretical textbooks of 
the American Army kept pace with the re- 
ports from Europe's firing line, and our offi- 
cers have been on the alert to make improve- 
ments upon Europe. We discarded the 
method of bayonet fighting long in use in the 
United States Army. We adopted the Eng- 
lish system which they evolved during the war. 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 209 

But in one of our training camps an Infantry- 
Captain discovered a serious defect in the 
English bayonet system, so now we have im- 
proved on theirs — using what was good in it,, 
rejecting what was bad. That has been the 
spirit. Utilize every bit of "dope" that comes 
over from Europe, but improve upon it if that 
can be done. 

But it did not stop there, this fitting of ci- 
vilians to become officers. The War Depart- 
ment was not content with getting men of a 
certain rigid physical standard, of firm char- 
acter, possessing executive ability, having the 
knack of instructing in an interesting way and 
knowing their branch of military science. 
There was something else, something of tre- 
mendous importance. It is true that war de- 
grades or ennobles a man. Whether the man 
in the ranks is lifted up or let slide down, that 
depends to a large extent upon his officers. It 
is not the purpose of the United States to call 
out hundreds of thousands of its young man- 
hood into war, and then, when peace comes, 
to have a horde of diseased and degenerate 
beings loosened upon the land. To prevent 
that we have been lectured and lectured upon 
camp sanitation, the transmission of disease. 



210 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

personal hygiene. But it did not stop there. 

To the different training camps was sent a 
physician who had investigated conditions on 
the Mexican border for the War Department^ 
He discussed with us the question of venereal 
diseases, how they affected the fighting effi- 
ciency of an army. How one great Power 
had suffered enormously during this war be- 
cause of a lack of proper precautions against 
the insidious germs transmitted by illicit re- 
lations. What the effect of that was upon the 
man, and later, when he married, upon the 
race. We were told how to keep the practice 
down. 

The lives of men are in your hands; one 
grave mistake on your part, one blundering 
order at a crucial moment, and your men are 
wiped out! To realize that is to feel a deep 
responsibility. Our new Reserve Officers feel 
it. They are not taking things lightly. They 
know that the foundations, gained in the Re- 
serve Officers' Training Camps, were sound — 
the best that America, France, and England 
could give them. 



CHAPTER X 



^*^THE GLORY OF THE GUNS^^ 



Splendidly immersed in his subject, our 
instructor, a dapper little Field Artillery Cap- 
tain, repeated as he dabbed at the blackboard : 
"The initial deflection difference, should be de- 
termined by increasing the parallax of the aim- 
ing point algebraically by ten." 

And three batteries speeded up their 
thoughts in a try to keep pace with his wis- 
dom. We four hundred-odd men, seeking to 
fit ourselves for artillery conmiissions in the 
Officers' Reserve Corps, hung upon the Cap- 
tain's words — in his day among the great 

in football at West Point. Outside of the 
long wooden shack where we sat a June sun 
slid short shadows across the edges of the 
Madison Barracks Parade. A peaceful spot, 
this, on the northern shores of New York 
State, yet . . . 

There were memories. I saw again the red 



211 



212 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

lands of Europe. Particularly I saw the 
brief ridges and the wide fields of Northern 
France, that hellish place of earth where day 
and night the guns growl. The skyline spotted 
with the fleecy white puffs of bursting shrap- 
nel, the ground spewed up amid the ugly 
brown smoke of the shells. And the drum- 
ming of the guns, hour after hour, day after 
day. . . . "Should be announced," our Captain 
was saying, "in the multiple of five." And 
to me they had a sharpened significance those 
diagrams that the Captain so hastily dabbed 
upon the blackboard, likewise those words of 
"deflection difference" and "multiple" that 
may seem so cabalistic to you. 

It all meant that in other Officers Reserve 
Corps training camps scattered throughout our 
country, other batches of men similar to 
ours were hearing them also, these same 
words — "deflection." It meant that the United 
States was hard at manufacturing effi- 
cient Artillery Officers. It meant that — not 
to-morrow, or the day after, but inevitably 

• — God help the Germans ! . . . Not God as we 
understand Him but the Kaiser's playmate, 
the mead-soaked Odin of Valhalla, pet deity 
of the warriors of ancient barbaric Germany. 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 213 

A Napoleonic cynicism is that the Almighty 
is on the side with the heaviest artillery. Based 
upon this assumption there seemed to be early 
in the war something in the Hun slogan ''Gott 
mit uns/' For it was their preponderance of 
heavy guns that let the Kaiser's legions get to 
the edge of Paris. Likewise it was the superi- 
ority of the French ''Soixante Quinze that 
stopped the Germans at the Marne, depriving 
his Imperial Highness, Frederick Wilhelm, of 
the carouse he had wet his lips over. Likewise 
it was the superiority of the British guns that 
enabled Tommy to drive back the Hun at Mes- 
sines and the Somme. Likewise it will be the 
superiority of our American gunfire that will 
make the Hun forget all about a "place in the 
sun" and more about seeking a refuge in his 
own musty shadows on the other side of the 
Rhine. And that will be to the glory of the 
guns. 

For the guns are glorious. I first sensed 
their thrill from an observation post, like a 
"crow's nest" in a great pine tree overlooking 
the frozen swamps of the Bobr in Poland. I 
saw what they did at Antwerp, at No wo Geor- 
giewsk, at Ivangorod, at Warsaw, in East 
Prussia, in the Augustowo Forest, at Servian, 



214 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

Nish, at Ypres and La Basse. The guns speak 
and fortresses fall. Whom the gods would de- 
stro}^ they first let hear the guns. Yes, they 
drive men mad. Their voice terrifies. Their 
work is fascinating. They play hide and seek 
with the enemy's artillery, striving to smash 
it; they smash his trenches, his infantry, his 
cavalry, his trains, his motors — the motor even 
of his Kaiser. They are lords of the field, the 
guns. 

Now in armies — it makes no difference 
what their nationality may be — you will al- 
ways find infantry, cavalry and artillery offi- 
cers who think that their branch is the only 
branch of fundamental importance. Each of 
these officers advances arguments to prove the 
preponderant importance of his arm, and each 
argument can be shot to pieces. As a matter 
of fact, the infantry would be powerless with- 
out the artillery in warfare to-day and the ar- 
tillery would be in hot water without infantry 
to protect it, and quite futile without infantry 
to inflict the incisive thrusts that the gunfire 
makes possible. As for cavalry, those who 
say that its usefulness is at an end speak from 
a narrow vision. I saw what the German cav- 
alry accomplished in the Baltic provinces of 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 215 

Hussia and what the Bulgar cavalry did in 
Servia. Acting with "horse artillery" (every 
man in the battery mounted, none were dead 
weight, riding on the carriages, this making 
for speed) the cavalry executed drives of great 
impact and speed. And in 1917 on the West 
front, the British, when the Hun defenses 
broke, swept cavalry into action with great 
success. And one day the Hun front will 
collapse. Then watch our cavalry and light 
artillery race after them! 

So, you see, there is a decided interrelation 
between the different branches of an army and 
one is dependent upon the other. So let us 
take for our supposition that provided we in 
the artillery are amply assisted by infantry 
and aerial scouting — as we will be — it will be 
our American guns that will end the war. 
... A broad statement; let us see. 

First — ^American guns. France has reached 
the zenith of her military power. England is 
reaching hers in the spring of 1918. Then 
with the summer of 1918 we come in. Our 
Regular Army is almost in; our militia is go- 
ing in; after the militia our great new Na- 
tional Army goes in. We used to think, in 
camp, how the new army would be officered. 



216 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

by the men we were bunking with — how after 
us would come other officer candidates to the 
camp — then, more, more. For our army will 
grow and grow until Imperial Germany is 
crushed — until the world is made safe for you 
and me to live in, free from the yoke of Berlin. 
And we realized it was up to us who were 
studying artillery at Madison Barracks, at 
Fort Oglethorpe, at Leon Springs — where 
not? — to get to know the guns, every part of 
them, to get to know how to use them effect- 
ively — to love the guns, A good Artillery 
Officer must love the guns. Commanding a 
battery, he has four guns — ^beautifully in- 
tricate and accurate pieces of the engineering 
art. I am thinking of our trim three-inchers. 
They are slender and good to look upon ; with 
their long steel barrels, they suggest sleeping 
power. They repose upon carriages painted 
olive drab, which, like our uniforms, blend into 
the landscape and at distances they are diffi- 
cult to discern. They can hurl shells weighing 
thirty pounds, with deadly accuracy up to 
4,500 yards, not so accurately up to 8,500 
yards. If you are standing within twenty 
yards of the explosion of one of these shells 
you are not safe. If our shell be shrapnel and 



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OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 217 

it bursts about thirty feet above the gi^ound 
where you are — well, consult a physician. 
For theoretically a single shrapnel properly 
placed should cover each square yard of 250 
square yards beneath it with one soft bullet. 

Then think, that you, the Battery Com- 
mander can conceal yourself in an observation 
post, perhaps screened by bushes, perhaps in 
a church steeple, a considerable distance away 
from your guns. Think that these guns can 
be hidden from the enemy, behind a crest, for 
example; unable to see their target, their tar- 
get unable to see them. Think that you, hid- 
ing yourself from the enemy, but ever watch- 
ing him, can by merely uttering a few com- 
mands into a telephone leading down to your 
guns, so control their sheaf of fire that it will 
dart with amazing accuracy upon any part of 
the target that you may desire to strew with 
destruction. The thought that such power, 
the sweep of such explosives generated by four 
guns can be so perfectly controlled by one 
man, quite far from them, gives to the real 
artilleryman a fascination and thrill. You 
know how a man who loves a horse will pat 
its flanks. I can conceive a man who loves the 
guns, doing that to their cold sides. 



218 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

In the training camps we of the artillery 
were separated from the infantry. For a 
fortnight we studied artillery without even see- 
ing a gun. At the end of that fortnight our 
battery was marched out into the country and 
our instructor rattled off a tactical situation. 
The supposition was that the location of our 
barracks was the location of the "main body" 
of an imaginary American column that was 
advancing upon Henderson's Harbor, a sum- 
mer resort of Northern New York, about ten 
miles away from our barracks. We were or- 
dered to join an imaginary "advance party" 
of our column. Accordingly we left the bar- 
racks at an imaginary trot, caught up with the 
imaginary "supports" of the "advance party," 
and were told that the battery was to go into 
action. 

"B. C. station" rattled off our Captain, 
"that second telegraph pole down the road. 
Aiming point — right edge, that red freight car 
— from left and at 150 mils, a lone tree. Got 
it? Guns are 200 yards up the road just off 
it to the right, behind that swell marked by 
yellow flowers. Target — the second telegraph 
pole along the railroad tracks just ahead — ivt 
line with that at 800 yards, an unpainted barn 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 219 

— in line with that at 3,000 yards a peculiar 
shaped tree, cut off vertically on the right 
side. Got it? . . , At the base of that tree 
trunk begins an infantry trench, extending 40 
miles to the left. Figure out the deflection 
and the deflection difference." 

"Question," a candidate shouted. "Shall 
we use the School of Fire Method?" 

Almost reproachfully our instructor re- 
garded him. 
"Of course!" 

Which brings us to two things. The brains 
that conceive this Reserve Ofiicers Artillery 
course are amazingly good brains. Those 
commands that our instructor reeled off about 
"aiming points" and all. Strange gibberish 
to you; strange gibberish, too, they would 
have been to most of us a fortnight before. 
But the big thing is this — that after only two 
weeks work, the instructor was able to take 
us out in the country and throw those techni- 
calities at us and demand that we then and 
there compute firing data that would turn that 
imaginary infantry trench into an inferno. 
More amazing, most of us were able to do it. 
In other words the officers who conceived this 
training camp course arranged it so shrewdly 



220 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

and intensively that those commissioned were 
not dubs, but men able to take the guns over 
to France and return to the Germans some of 
their own hell. 

The second important thing is the reference 
made to the School of Fire. You have never 
heard of it? It is something which, as events 
should turn out, will not gratify the Imperial 
being of the Hohenzollerns. In 1911 there 
was established at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, 
a sort of super-school to which were detailed 
Artillery Officers of our Army for super- 
study in the science of fire. An Artillery Offi- 
cer, former military aide to Roosevelt when 
President, and now Colonel of the 3 — th Field 
Artillery of the National Army, was respon- 
sible for the founding and efficiency of that 
school. As an American attache to the Ger- 
man Army, the Colonel attended the German 
School of Fire at Juterborg and brought back 
with him, for our Army, all of it that was ef- 
ficient. Thousands of rounds of ammunition 
were shot off on the Oklahoma tracts. Thou- 
sands of records were tabulated. Guns were 
fired under all sorts of conditions and at all 
conceivable targets. And the result of each 
shot was put down in black and white. 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION, 221 

Until we entered the war no one in the Army 
save a few, knew the results of all this firing 
at Fort Sill. Those who did know were our 
artillery officers whose business it was to check 
up the fire statistics, group them and on the 
law of errors reach certain conclusions. The 
results of their work were embodied in docu- 
ments filed by the School of Fire. They com- 
prise the most valuable documents known to 
men in the Field Artillery. If an officer under- 
stands the "probabilities" and can apply them, 
why, write "finish" for anything that gets 
within range of his guns. In the training 
camps we were tutored in these codified truths 
of artillery fire, and those of us who studied 
them and won commissions were all subse- 
quently sent from our regiments to the School 
of Fire, where for ten weeks in the winter just 
past we worked with varied types of American 
and French guns and howitzers. So we are 
bound to make things rather disagreeable for 
the Huns. 

So you see, your country isn't so inefficient 
after all. Of brains, our little Regular Army 
had an abundance. The officers made in West 
Point are better than any in the world. Yes, 
better than those who come out of that factory 



222 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

for Prussian Lieutenants the Koniglich Preus- 
sishhe Haupt Kadetten Anstalt, at Gross 
Lichterfelde. And best of all, while the civil- 
ian masses of our country were sleeping the 
sleep of false security, those officers of our 
Regular Army were working away, undis- 
mayed by public indifference, not seeking the 
public recognition that would be theirs in 
some other countries, unostentatiously prepar- 
ing for the day of war which their studies in 
the historic relations of nations told them must 
come. And then America awoke. And the long 
period of unthanked-for work of our Army 
Officers showed results. It showed results in- 
stantly with the forty-odd thousand civilians 
in those first Officer's Reserve training camps. 
It is showing results as the commissioned 
among us have begun to train the new Na- 
tional Army. It will write the result big on 
the battlefields of Europe. 

All of you have a dear one or know some 
one called to the colors. Probably in the in- 
fantry, for an army includes a vastly greater 
number of infantrymen than men of the ar- 
tillery. Consider what the guns mean to that 
man in the infantry — ^how they protect him, 
make his work easier, greatly decrease his 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 223 

chances of being lost. Let's bring it right 
down close. You are in the infantry; I, in 
the artillery. 

You are a private in the new National 
Army. You are in a trench, let us say, in the 
summer of 1918 in front of Mulhausen, which 
is in German Alsace. Orders come from our 
Army Headquarters that we are to begin a 
great offensive. The orders percolate down 
through field army, division and brigade head- 
quarters to regimental headquarters. They go 
down through the Major of your Battalion to 
your Captain. Through him to your Lieuten- 
ants and Sergeants, through them to you. 

You are told that your company is to cap- 
ture a certain width of the German trenches 
in front of Mulhausen and that you will be 
completely supported by your artillery. 
Weather permitting, the infantry attack is to 
start on a certain day. The hour will be told 
you later. To us in the artillery have come 
similar orders, only our attack starts on a dif- 
ferent day. It starts earlier. It starts ten 
days before you begin. For ten days our bat- 
tery fires upon the "sector" your company is 
to attack. We have the range of the barbed 
wire entanglements. Meanwhile our heavy 



224 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

howitzers pour upon the trenches explosive 
shells. This demolishes the trenches, drives 
the Huns to hide in dug-outs often twenty feet 
under ground. They can escape the frag- 
ments of our shells there, but they cannot es- 
cape their sound. 

I recall a night two years ago in front of 
Ypres. In his headquarters on the Denercke 
Farm, Colonel Meyers of the 37th Bavarian 
Infantry (I was there as a correspondent) 
said to me; "It is not so much the wounds they 
inflict but the effect that the sound of their ex- 
plosions has upon my men, that makes this 
shell fire bad. Many of my men have been 
driven insane by it, or their nerves have been 
so badly shattered as to make them useless for 
the firing line." . . . 

So besides demolishing their first line 
trenches in front of Mulhausen, we are shak- 
ing the German's morale^ making it easier for 
you Infantrymen to dispose of him when the 
rush comes. 

The Huns have a word for the kind of fire 
our Jbig howitzers are using, they call it 
"''Trommelfeuer" — drum fire. The Hun has 
come to hate it. He used to like it when he 
had more guns, when he was beating the drum. 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 225 

It is as if the earth were a vast drum and that 
the shells falling upon it were as the incessant 
roll of infinite drumsticks. So do we beat the 
drum. But that is not all. Upon the area be- 
hind the German's first trenches, the battery- 
just in our rear is laying another kind of fire. 
The French have an exquisite word for it — 
"barrage" fii^e. 

ISTow barrage is the French word for dam. 
The thought is that behind the enemy first 
trenches is laid a barrage — a dam of bursting 
shells. The Hun will try to send reinforce- 
ments, food, ammunition, stretcher-bearers to 
his first-line trenches while the "drum fire" of 
our battery is upon them. But the battery 
behind us have placed a ''barrage" fire behind 
the German front trenches, and through this 
few men can come and live or be sane. You 
see why the French called it barrage — a dam? 
Much water comes up to the dam but the dam 
holds it there. Only a little water trickles over 
it ; only a few men trickle through the barrage. 
And so for days do we keep knifing away with 
our shell at his barbed wire and the bat- 
tery behind us lays its "barrage" fire, prevent- 
ing the Huns from sending help to the men 
whom you in the Infantry are to attack. 



226 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

Up to the hour designated for the start of 
your infantry advance we pound away. Now 
over the top of the trenches you go, and race 
through No Man's Land to the enemy. Our 
Battery Commander has placed in your trench 
one of our artillery observers ; when you leave 
the trench to attack, he goes with you with his 
signal apparatus. Above you swoop our avia- 
tors. No longer do we strive to cut wire; we 
finished that. Now we fire on an imaginary 
line ahead of you. You walk up close to that 
line and stop. We fire, say for three minutes ; 
then increase our range 100 yards, and again 
we pause to fire at that new range, and again 
you walk to within the extremity of the flam- 
ing, smoking curtain we spread before you; 
and so you go — a hundred more, a hundred 
more. 

Our next "lift" brings us to the German 
trench. You come closer to our "curtain." 
We pound away. You are drawing near the 
explosions of our own projectiles. And then 
our "curtain" of fire which has kept the enemy 
Infantry down in their dugouts so they didn't 
dare to come up and train their machine guns 
on you, "lifts." It lengthens the range, play- 
ing now upon his next trench — while you leap 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 227 

in through the lifting smoke and bayonet the 
Huns. That is the "creeping barrage" — ^the 
glory of the guns. 

So as not to complicate that, I refrained 
from saying that our "counter batteries" in the 
days of preparatory fire and during your at- 
tack have been firing upon the enemy's artil- 
lery constantly so as to keep down the volume 
of shells that he could put upon you when you 
advance. Perhaps by re-reading and by di- 
gesting the above, you will have a clear idea 
of what the guns mean, why they are so tre- 
mendously important. . . . 

Do you remember in the summer of 1916 — 
before the Revolution — when the Russians un- 
der Brussiloif made such a tremendous at- 
tempt on the Austrian lines in the Bucowina 
and Galicia? Brussiloff did not have enough 
artillery. Do you know how he tried to over- 
come that? To make up for his inability to 
obtain a superiority of artillery fire — an es- 
sential for a successful offensive — he hurled 
great masses of men into action, fed Russian 
peasants by the thousands into the fury of the 
Austrian guns. Day after day they came — 
hordes of Russian infantry — almost literally, 
as an Austrian General put it, "trampling 



228 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

down our trenches," which means paying an 
appalling price in human life. And which is 
emphatically not a, part of our war strategy; 
•for we are making quantities of guns and in 
the training camps quantities of officers for 
these guns. Thus our infantry will have tre- 
mendous artillery support, which means great 
protection and saving of life. 

So well was the land of France and Bel- 
gium mapped in the years before the war as 
to the location of every house and hedge, so 
well have the trench systems been photo- 
graphed and mapped from the sky since the 
day the trenches were dug, that artillery 
ranging there is quite simple. One day as we 
studied ranging at Madison Barracks, I 
thought how the year before, I stood in a 
bombproof dug-out in the side of a slope lead- 
ing down to the canal at Houtem which is in 
front of Ypres. On a rough table there lay 
a map with a scale, corresponding to twelve 
inches to the mile. On that map were indi- 
cated all the positions of the English, which 
the Huns on that particular section of the 
line had been able to learn. At the table sat 
a young Bavarian Lieutenant, a telephone 
clamped to his head. If his Colonel had de- 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 229 

sired a certain section of the English front 
shelled he would merely have had to call up 
his battery station and say, for example, 
"Open fire on Position 24." On the map Po- 
sition 24 was designated; on the map the po- 
sition of his guns was designated. A simple 
matter indeed to get the distance, the range 
from the guns to Position 24 — just a meas- 
urement of the map, with a few technical cor- 
rections. . . , 

At intervals there came over the phone to 
this young Bavarian Lieutenant, fire observa- 
tions being made by another officer of the bat- 
tery, posted, one guessed in the trenches, or in 
one of the several church steeples nearby. This 
information enabled the Lieutenant in the dug- 
out to issue orders to swing the fire to right or 
left, to shorten or lengthen it, to burst the 
shrapnel closer to, or higher above, the ground* 

As we stood in the dug-out the young Lieu- 
tenant became quite excited. He shouted an 
order to a Sergeant at the dugout's mouth; 
the Sergeant shouted it to the battery not 
twenty yards away. We saw the cannoneers 
cease firing, strew branches over the guns and 
race for the ruins of a house a hundred yards 
away. There they flattened themselves against 



230 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

the walls. The officer who had been at the guns 
hurried down into the bombproof. "Aero- 
plane," remarked the young Bavarian Lieu- 
tenant. 

It was then clear to us. Branches strewn 
over the guns to conceal them from eyes in 
the sky. The observer far to the front must 
have phoned in a warning that English avia- 
tors were rising to look for the battery. The 
men who had flattened themselves against the 
walls of the house? That made them more 
difficult of observation from the sky. 

But in the Officers' Reserve Corps camps, 
we were not merely being taught the use of 
artillery for this Western front warfare, this 
being able to measure off ranges on a map, 
which suggests siege operations. That is quite 
quickly obtained once one has the fundament- 
als of the "war of manoeuvre." Bather, we 
were taught the use of artillery in the field, the 
quick moving about, shifting of positions, the 
quick going into action — mobility. Once a 
man understands that kind of war he can use 
the guns under any kind of conditions. It 
gives one a thrill to think that the great new 
American Army will break up the Hun front 
and that then there will come a chance to use 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 231 

our guns "in the field" — as the Germans used 
theirs when they swept into France and Bel- 
gium, galloping after the withdrawing Allies, 
covering them with shell. What a goal for an 
American Field Artillery officer to look for- 
ward to — galloping after retreating Germans 
and sweeping them with shrapnel. • . . It will 
come. 

Before our course ended at Madison in the 
second week of August, 1917, there was put 
at our disposal much of the confidential in- 
formation relating to Field Artillery that our 
General Staff has acquired from Europe. 
Combine this with our own School of Fire 
data, and you get an idea that this new Na- 
tional Army of yours is going to be quite a 
business-like proposition. For our training 
was broad. Not only were we being taught 
the guns and how to use them, but we had to 
know something about horses — what their 
common ailments are, how to cure them, how 
to take care of our horses so as to get the most 
work out of them. You see a battery is de- 
pendent upon its horse. Soldiers cannot pull 
the guns. They're too heavy. Also, we had 
to master the field telegraph or "buzzer" and 
the "field telephone." We had learned how 



232 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

to take apart and put together those instru- 
inents. How to locate and remedy "trouble'* 
for the wires make an important means of 
communication between the observation post 
of the officer who is watching and correcting 
the results of our fire, down to the officer in 
command at the guns. All of us came to know 
the International ^lorse Code which is used on 
our "buzzers" and wig-wag, for if the "buzzer" 
falls doA^Ti, we send our "dot-dash" messages 
with a flag. And in August, about the time 
we started to fire our guns with sub-caliber 
ammunition, other future officers of our Ar- 
tillery in Illinois, California, wherever the 
camps were, were firing too. 

Sound travels. How far? I wonder if 
Potsdam heard those giuis. 3Iaybe not. later 
then. Summer! Our guns — our orcn ginis — 
playing along the front in France: muttering 
out, for Imperial Germany, a Miserere, an im- 
measiu'able dirge, which will drive the Hohen- 
zollerns to their "old German God," quite 
mad. 



CHAPTER XI 

WHY WE WILL DEFEAT GERMANY 

Because what follows is quite personal, the 
pronoun "one" will be used. Since 1914, when 
war broke, through the two years following 
one has seen much of the Kaiser's War Ma-- 
chine. As a correspondent for American pub- 
lications, one followed the German soldier 
from the day he reported in a dreary barrack 
yard to the night he died in a trench at La 
Basse. One has seen the German soldier in all 
stages of his training and in action under va- 
rying conditions. One has watched him oni 
the march both following victory and leaving 
behind defeat. One has been over the lines 
in his aeroplanes, beside his guns in action, in 
his headquarters and in his front line trenches 
in France. One observed him in that frightful 
winter battle of East Prussia and saw the cor- 
ruption that he sowed in 191.5 in the armies 
of Russia, the way the betrayed peasants of 

233 



234 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

the Czar were fed to the fury of Krupp guns. 
One made it one's business to learn as much 
about the Hun as possible. And when one 
compares the power of the Hun to make war 
with America, one does so from first-hand ob- 
servation. 

Is the German War Machine the invincible 
organization we have been led to believe ? Are 
its soldiers super-soldiers? Are its officers as 
efficient as gossip says? Do they fight better 
than any other people? Is there something 
in the German, the German soul which predes- 
tines them to victory? Much has been written 
about that ; much is bunk. Let us see. 

Be tolerant. Because one begins with some- 
thing that seems dogmatic, do not think that 
one is seeking to bore. But to understand 
why Germany will be crushed we must tunnel' 
down deep. We must get at a fundamental 
difference between the way they think, their 
army thinks, and the way we think. Now 1 
am not going to drag out history, but if you 
would understand the nonchalance with which 
a Hun can shoot down a woman or child you 
must begin 'way back. The Germans are not 
Christians. They never have been. Their 
Kultur is a veneer over barbarism. Their own 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 235 

Goethe said that the more civilized a Prussian 
became, the more barbarous he would be. 
Goethe looked into the future and saw Zep- 
pelins raining bombs on hospitals in the 
streets of London. He saw Belgium raped, 
the Canadians crucified, the introduction of 
poisonous gas into war and the Lusitania 
babies. He saw the young womanhood of 
Northern France put in freight cars with 
drunken soldiers of the Kaiser and sent back 
to Germany, there to breed soldiers for a Ger- 
man Army twenty years from now. Yet the 
world was used to looking upon Germany as 
a Christian nation. Did it not have churches? 
The German has never thought in a Chris- 
tian way. We attach too much significance 
to the revolt of Luther. That was more tem- 
poral than spiritual. The German of old be- 
lieved in barbaric gods. He believed in Wo- 
tan, Thor, Brunhilde. The German of to-day 
believes in the old barbaric gods. His Chris- 
tianity is but a gesture. What does the Kaiser 
mean when in his speeches he refers to "Our 
old German God"? When they wanted a 
fetish, a name that would bring them luck, 
when they were being pushed back in France 
and they organized a great new line of trench- 



236 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

es, a place where they could take refuge from 
the relentless attack of the English, what name 
did they pick for it ? They named it after their 
old German God. Look on a war map and 
you can see it there — the Wotan line. 

Now when the ancient Germans came into 
contact with Rome they met Christianity. 
Their religion had been based upon war. When 
a tribe went out to fight they invoked the aid 
of Thor and his hammer. If they were killed 
they believed that the beautiful Brunhilde 
flew down from the sky with her escort of 
mounted Valkyrie, who picked up killed and 
wounded alike, threw them across the saddles 
and galloped back skyward. There they went 
into the Hall of Wotan. A magic salve 
healed their wounds. Then there was a great 
feast over which Wotan presided and every- 
body got delightfully stewed drinking mead 
out of hollo wed-out horns. The next day the 
dead and wounded were sent back to earth to 
fight. That was the Teutons conception of the 
Resurrection. 

They became "converted" to Christianity. 
Can you imagine that gang ever accepting the 
doctrine that the meek are blessed ? They never 
did. They scratched their shaggy beards and 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 237 

accepted Christianity with reservations — be- 
cause their gang leaders told them to. They 
swapped deities. They exchanged Wotan for 
Jehovah. Now that was all right. Jehovah 
at one time might have been something like 
Wotan ; but he had gotten old, a bit bored with 
war and had put on some weight around the 
belt. They exchanged Thor for Lucifer. That 
was all right. Lucifer was a good fighter in 
his day. Now he was merely in the reserves. 
They judged he still had the punch if he 
wanted to use it. They swapped off Brun- 
hilde for the Virgin Mary. That went all 
right. 

There the Germans stopped. None of their 
ancient gods could they exchange for Christ, 
the man who was his brother's keeper, who 
preached helping the weak, who made com- 
panions of the downtrodden. That did not 
suit the Germans. They never accepted the 
teachings of Christ. Their interest in Him is 
merely conventional and historical. Examine 
into the way they think, look at quotations of 
their most popular writers, "The weak should 
perish, and it is our duty to help them perish," 
and this gem, "Women are for bearing chil- 
dren, men are for making war!" 



238 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

The teachings of their beloved philosopher 
Nietzsche, who exhorted a whole nation to cast 
aside sentimentality, who called Christianity 
the greatest curse that ever befell humanity, 
who begged and cajoled the whole German 
nation to be ruthless, cruel and deceitful — his 
teachings succeeded. 

The Germans began as savages. In their 
subconscious minds they think like savages to- 
day, their religion is the old code that the weak 
are a blotch on the face of the earth, and that 
it is the duty of the strong to make them per- 
ish. They did their best to exterminate Bel- 
gium, Servia, Rumania, Poland, and the weak, 
the women and children, of Northern France. 
When the Germans fight there is no big spirit- 
ual motive urging them on. Their motive at 
the start of the war was greed, just as the mo- 
tive of their barbarian ancestors who swooped 
down on Rome was greed — greed and lust for 
blood. 

Consider that the highest in Imperial Ger- 
many looted. One of the Kaiser's sons stole 
a fine turnout and a team of horses in Su- 
walki, Russia. The heir to the Imperial throne, 
when he wasn't engrossed with the butcher's 
daughter in the house of the ironmaster in 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 239 

Esch sur, I'Azette, Luxemburg, was stealing 
silver candlesticks and old paintings from 
chateaus and sending them back to his wife's 
palace in Potsdam. When so prominent a 
general as their Von Kluck and his staff looted 
the home of Madame Huard, an American 
woman — incidentally breaking open a bureau 
and finding an American flag there, which they 
left when they retreated, conspicuously plug- 
ging up a toilet — ^imagine what their millions 
of soldiers did to the homes of Belgium and 
France. 

Their rulers told them it would be a short 
war, a quick victory. They painted to them a 
conquered world with its riches lying at their 
feet. Their rulers began the war for greed, to 
gain land, to saddle an enormous indemnity 
on a crushed France, whom they expected 
would be suing for peace by January of 1915. 
I know this. I heard a drunken and a high 
officer of their General Staff boast it. The 
impulse of the whole nation in going into the 
war was greed. Only the other day a French 
Officer touched off the situation quite neatly. 

Speaking to our regiment in a training 
camp, he likened Belgium to a man living in 
a little house. Germany, the burglar, broke 



240 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

in, got as far as the first floor when the man 
driven to the second floor yelled for help. The 
neighbors came and surrounded the house. 
iThey couldn't catch the burglar. He was too 
strong. He was forty years getting ready for 
this job. The neighbors had just jumped out 
of bed in their pajamas, but they wouldn't go 
away and they wouldn't let the burglar get 
away with his booty. Pretty soon they began 
to get some of the fighting implements the 
burglar had. He saw he was in for it, he pro- 
posed to divide half of his loot if they would 
let him go. They scorned his offer. They will 
scorn every offer until he gives up everything 
and goes to jail in the bargain. 

He is in the wrong; they are in the right. 
He is fighting the fight of the thief cornered 
M^ith the goods. They are fighting the fight 
for justice. Educators, philosophers, writers, 
playwrights, public speakers, got Germany to 
thinking that might was right, that their Kai- 
ser was a being anointed of God, that the 
Germans were the chosen people of God — 
whose mission it was to conquer the world. 
[Which brings us to the soul of the German 
[Army. 

They did not get peace by January, 1915, 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 241 

as planned. They did not crush France and 
collect the big indemnity, as planned. They 
were not invincible, as believed. They got a 
terrible licking at the Marne — ^unexpected. 
They have lost over a million dead — furcht- 
bar! Their whole nation is on a starvation 
diet — ach^ Gott! Their rulers are continually 
promising them a peace which never comes — 
they went to war for greed. Poverty stares 
them in the face. They went to war believing 
might was right. They drank the blood of na- 
tions as no savages in history ever dared. Yet 
all this availed them nothing. Slowly they are 
being driven back. The only language they 
know is force. They are now getting more 
force than they want. They will get more. 

They have nothing, no big fine emotion to 
keep them going. They began as successful 
crooks and now they are cornered crooks. 
■Which is the way they are fighting, devoid of 
anything in their soul to stir them to the enor- 
mous sacrifices they will have to make, once 
the pressure of America's new armies is put 
against them. At the outset they swept every- 
thing before them ; then their morale was won- 
derful. Their morale is bound to curdle in a 
losing fight. 



242 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

They are in a losing fight and they know it. 
Contrast with this the fact that America never 
went to war for greed. She fought for her in- 
dependence; then to preserve it. She fought 
to free her own kind living under a barbarous 
flag. She fought to preserve her own nation 
that threatened to split apart, because she 
granted freedom to all men. She fought to 
free the oppressed of a European colony and 
now what? She is fighting to preserve her 
own liberty and by that the whole world's, 
from the greed of the Hun. 

America is a Christian nation. We do not 
believe that might is right. We have given 
of our blood so the weak would not perish, so 
that men would be free. We are fighting for 
an ideal. Germany is fighting basely. It is 
not hard to die for an ideal. It is hell to die 
for money. This is the basic difference be- 
tween their ability to make war to-day and 
ours. The morale, the spiritual power of a 
nation at war, is of enormous importance. And 
the morale is all in our favor. 

It is just that difference which will make the 
new American Army superior to Germany's. 
I fully appreciate how extravagant that may 
read to the capricious, but consider that I 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 243 

make it, even after having seen the wonderful 
discipHne of the German Army. Here is the 
difference: In 1915 I stood in the barracks 
yard of the German infantry haserne at 
Frankfort-on-Main. A new conscript levy 
was being trained. I asked the Rittmeister^ 
w^ho was acting as our guide: "What is the 
fundamental idea of your system of training?" 

In an airy manner, it never occurring to 
him that he was disposing of the personality 
of men, he said, "We take away their name 
and give them a number. As Hans Schmidt 
a man ceases to exist. We strive to," and the 
Major cynically smiled, "entirely destroy all 
their individuality. They become cogs in a 
machine," and his manner took on that objec- 
tionable boast fulness, "a world invincible ma- 
chine as you have seen." 

Now the little parts of a machine cannot 
function unless the greater parts first function. 
Now it is a fact that German troops often 
readily surrender after their officers and non- 
commissioned officers have been wounded or 
killed. In other words, these little cogs of a 
machine cease to work when the more impor- 
tant parts are disabled or cease to exist. Con- 
trast that with our system — as we are employ- 



244 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

ing it in cantonments. Those of us who are 
drilHng the new American Army are not 
taking away the individuality of the men un- 
der us and making them mere cogs of a ma- 
chine. Rather, although being thoroughly dis- 
ciplined, these new American soldiers are to 
be taught — after they almost subconsciously 
obey the commands of close order work — 
"squads rights," etc. — they are to he taught 
to act on their own initiative if their immedi- 
ate superiors all become put out of action. 

See how this works out. In the infantry for 
example, you are in "extended order," mean- 
ing you advance, lie down, or halt with a yard 
between each man. That is a formation for 
the open firing line, the men separated by that 
yard interval so as to present a compact tar- 
get. You are taught that the Captain com- 
mands your company skirmish line, that he sig- 
nals orders to platoon leaders (a company is 
divided into platoons) . These platoon leaders 
signal the orders — "Cease firing," etc. — to the 
squad leaders. Corporals (in each platoon 
there are four squads of eight men each). 
These Corporals transmit the orders to the 
seven other men in their squads. So much for 
the machine idea. 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 245 

But now here is the difference. Every 
American private is trained to watch his tar- 
get, to fire more rapidly when it becomes more 
visible, to be economical of ammunition, to 
take cover (hide behind brush, rocks, etc.) but 
not to hide behind that cover too long (a man 
in a warm room hates to jump into a cold 
bath) but to advance. In brief, the private is 
taught how to act on his own resources on the 
firing line, although told to take orders from 
his Corporal. Thus if his Corporal, if his pla- 
toon leaders are put out of action, that Ameri- 
can private is not useless. He does not lose his 
head. He has been taught how to act on his 
own responsibility. Under all the military 
discipline, his individuality has been allowed 
to live — not destroyed like in the German War 
Machine. Which is why in the last analysis 
the American once trained is a better soldier 
than the German. He does not lose his head 
and get into a panic when his immediate supe- 
riors are killed, and, not knowing what to do, 
forthwith surrenders, bellowing "Kamerad! 
Comrade!" to those he wishes to capture him. 

In the Officers' Training camps of 1917 our 
instructors gave us the viewpoint of American 
Officers. It was of enormous importance how 



246 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

those of us who were commissioned would 
handle the men under us in the new American 
Army. We have taken to heart Army Regu- 
lations, which say: ''Superiors are forbidden 
to injure those under their authority by ty- 
rannical or capricious conduct or by abusive 
language. While maintaining discipline and 
the thorough and prompt performance of mili- 
tary duty, all officers, in dealing with enlisted 
men, will bear in mind the absolute necessity 
of so treating them as to preserve their self- 
respect/' 

An ideal which it is very wise for any young 
Officer to take as his own. If he does he will 
get more willing work out of his men. They 
will enjoy their work more. And what makes 
more for efficiency than "creative joy" in 
things military as in everything else. I con- 
trast this ideal — the ideal that our Reserve Of- 
ficers were given for the new American Army, 
with the German way. And again the Kaiser's 
War Machine is the loser. I stood with the 
walls of the shell-shattered church of the An- 
nunciation of Mary the Virgin in Houtem, 
which is before Ypres. It was filled with Ger- 
man soldiers being given a drill in loading and 
firing for the trenches. I heard an officer bel- 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 247 

low at them, "Faster, you pig dogs. Faster!" 
How they would rejoice in giving their lives 
for that officer, would they not? They would 
not. 

As an American correspondent left the rail- 
road station in Lille, after the Germans cap- 
tured it, Bavarian privates, farmer boys, 
stopped to gaze at the American. Whereupon 
a German officer with him slashed their faces 
with a riding crop. Imagine that officer, 
called upon to lead those same men in a charge. 
He'd quickly be killed, shot or "accidentally" 
bayonetted in the back. All of which means 
inefficiency. Yes, the new American Army 
has that decided advantage over the German 
— the spirit governing the relations between 
officers and men. 

We were taught that while strict discipline 
is imperative, that the officers who encourage 
confidence and sympathy in their men, who 
can induce their men to come to them for ad- 
vice in their troubles, those men will get better 
results than the most marvelous disciplinarian 
who treats his men as if they were not human 
beings but mere mechanical cogs. It is team 
work that counts. Men going into battle, each 
pulling for the other, for their officers, for the 



248 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

whole, accomplish more than men lashed into 
battle. Do you remember the speech your 
football coach used to make between halves? 
"Come on, men. All together now. You can 
do it. Tear them to pieces." That's the spirit 
— the "get together" idea — not the attitude of 
the Prussian Lieutenant, "The first man who 
wavers will get a pistol bullet in his head." 
Ours will be the onslaught of the spiritual, not 
the onslaught bred by fear of those above us. 

As the Officers are, so is the Army. There 
is much that is mythical about the German 
officer. He is a product of German educa- 
tion. He fills himself with poisonous philos- 
ophy which makes him believe that he is every- 
thing, that all else is nothing. The things he 
studies in the cadet schools or the universities 
make him an enormous egotist. Just so long 
as the German officer can subordinate that 
egotism to the orders of the War Machine he 
leads his troops into battle unafraid. When 
he is not under orders, when there is no magic 
or mummery of the Kaiser in the air he is often 
a coward. He is afraid of death because he 
is such an enormous egotist. 

Two things come to mind. The little shell- 
shot village of Houtem in front of Ypres ; two 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 249 

American correspondents in charge of a Cap- 
tain of the German General Staff. He agreed 
to take them down to the front line trenches. 
At Brigade Headquarters, he learned that a 
part of the road they would have to go down 
was open to machine gun fire. He had agreed 
to see the whole thing through. He backed 
out and detailed a Sergeant to take the Ameri- 
cans down. The point I am trying to make 
is that if that officer had been ordered to take 
the correspondents down he would have 
obeyed. But on his own bottom just taking 
a sporting chance — nothing doing! 

It was not in his make-up. He was too 
much of an egotist. He would have obeyed 
an order through fear of court-martial and 
what people would say, were he to disobey. 
And he is like most of the officers in the Ger- 
man Army. They think like machines. They 
obey like machines. They haven't it in them 
to do the nervy thing just for the zest of it. 
That is why their aviation officers hate 
the American flying corps of the French 
Army. 

When the French wanted to blind the Ger- 
man artillery at Verdun, they sent for the Es- 
quadrille Lafayette, American flyers in the 



'250 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

I 
French service. The Americans loved the 

risky game they were in. Fighting the Ger- 
mans they took break-neck chances in the air 
and made the Germans really look foolish. The 
difference was the German aviation officers 
were methodically obeying orders, so much, 
nothing more. The Americans were fighting 
the way a 'varsity team holds for downs on the 
one yard line. There is that difference between 
the German officer and the American, and 
there is another. 

If anything, our way of fighting is more 
reckless than the English. When the North- 
umberland Fusiliers went over the top at the 
Hun, do you know what they did? They 
took a soccer football with them and during 
the charge kicked it from one man to the 
other. If a man who was about to kick it went 
down, another ran up and gave the ball a boot 
— all this under machine gun fire. It got the 
Hun's goat. German officers who were cap- 
tured in that attack were indignant. For the 
English to charge kicking a football, that to 
the mind of a German officer was almost sac- 
rilege. Had they not been taught for years 
that war is a holy thing? And so do they fight, 
doggedly, without song, except when it is or- 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 251 

dered. Orders, blind obedience to them, as 
much as the orders call for, that and nothing 
more — by that their courage is limited. 

The German officer is taught to be a brute 
in his cadet school.. The Kaiser's dictates have 
placed him so far above a civilian that even in 
peace times a Lieutenant in command of a 
platoon marching through the streets of Ber- 
lin could hold up the fire department rushing 
to a burning building until his platoon had 
passed. They treat their soldiers like cattle. 
The discipline of their army is one of fear. It 
is ground into the men. The education that 
the men got deliberately prepared them for 
this kind of discipline. American soldiers 
would not stand for it. 

I have heard German officers order men 
flogged. I have seen them trip and send a 
man sprawling in the mud. To strike a soldier 
in the face with a riding crop — or a woman 
either for that matter — is no uncommon thing. 
It is rare that the soldiers of a German com- 
pany like their captain. That is not uncom- 
mon in the American Army. I heard a Ger- 
man officer call men who were just going into 
the trenches "damn pig dogs" and something 
worse. Imagine such tyrannical conduct ever 



252 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

existing in the American Army without the 
officer being court-martialed. I have talked to 
German wounded in the hospital, I have heard 
them curse their officers. Judge that by their 
own word "efficiency." Do you think soldiers 
who obey through fear, who secretly hate, can 
compare with the soldiers of the National 
Army most of whom think "We are in this. 
Let's make the best of it. Do a good job." 

Do you think that the German private is 
going to fight as well as the American? He 
cannot. He has nothing to fall back on. He's 
a crook caught with the goods, and every day 
the police are getting stronger and our Ameri- 
can soldiers are the police. They represent 
law among nations, order among people, jus- 
tice to humanity. And they sing "God help 
Kaiser Bill." And Kaiser Bill will call on 
Wotan, his old German God, and he will find 
him quite steeped in his bowl of mead and un- 
able to help at all. For the Huns are fighting 
without an ideal. And our ideal ? Do you re- 
member how well the Crusaders used to fight? 
Their ideal spanned the centuries. It was the 
form of a cross. 



CHAPTER XII 



"all in the day's work" 



Now the National Army is not one vast 
body of men thinking day and night of war. 
They are not men who have had their individ- 
ualities fused into a military machine. Not 
that they are indifferent soldiers. They are 
good, very good. But they are human, en- 
tirely so. They laugh — as every democratic 
army laughs — the English, the French, the 
Canadian. And it is when they laugh that one 
more often glimpses the other side of them — 
and of their officers. For as I think these 
things over I think how few of them would 
have been tolerated in an army with a heart of 
steel, like the German. As I think of "Beefy" 
and "Mike" Hogan, I'm glad it's that way, 
because it does soldiers good to laugh. There 
are times when even grim Mars smiles. He 
must. 

Almost immediately after a "rookie" is ac- 

253 



254 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

cepted he has read to him extracts from the 
**blue book," Army Regulations, and from 
the Articles of War, the backbone of military 
law. He is told what his rights as a soldier are 
— the treatment that he has a right to receive, 
the things he must and must not do. He has 
the right to protest against tyrannical and 
abusive conduct by an officer and to cause that 
officer to be court-martialed. He is told that 
in time of war the punishment for certain mil- 
itary offences is particularly severe. 

In any National Army cantonment with the 
coming of green recruits you can see them, in 
a "squad room," gathered around an officer 
who is reading aloud from a legal-looking 
book that contains the Articles of War. By 
the time he has finished, seven things stick in 
their minds: 

The penalty for desertion can be — ^Death. 

For going asleep while on sentry duty — 
Death. 

For violating a safeguard — Death. 

For giving aid or comfort to the enemy — 
Death. 

For mutiny — Death. 

For looting — Death. 

For rapine — Death. 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 255 

In one of our negro regiments of the Na- 
tional Army a Captain had just closed his 
book. 

"Men," he said, "I have read to you the 
Articles of War that you are required to know 
for your own good. Any questions?" 

A young buck with a scar on his right cheek 
got up. "Capt'n," he drawled, "Ah likes t* 
asks yo' one li'l' queshun. Jes' s'pose some 
low-down niggah steals mah watch or sum- 
thing, and Ah catches him. What does Ah 
do?" 

"What would you do. Recruit Lewis?"* 
asked the Captain. 

The negro's eyes rolled happily. "Why, 
Capt'n," and he smiled lusciously, "Ah would 
suttinly make dat coon looks like a dish o' 
stew'd tripe a la mulatto. Ah'd get out mah 
Old Ben an' Ah'd shorely carve up dat coon." 

"You'd do nothing of the kind," replied the 
Captain. "You'd report the thief at once to 
the First Sergeant, and we'd handle his case." 

"But, Capt'n, couldn't Ah takes jes' one 
li'r swipe at dat coon?" 

"Not one," cautioned the Captain, "If 
there's any punishment to be made, we'll make 
it. Another thing: from now on razors are 



256 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

only to shave yourself with. Get it? If I hear 
of any of you ever fighting with razors, I'll 
take away every razor in the company and 
make you patronize the regimental barber. 
The use of your razors on any one but Ger- 
mans is forbidden." 

And with that there came into being among 
them a certain noblesse oblige about the razor 
which is being tactfully observed. Like the 
Hun, they now have a "Der Tag" to look for- 
ward to. 

Malingering is a trick of old soldiers more 
than of new. But the "rookie" catches on 
quickly enough and tries it. He doesn't try 
very often. There was a boy in our regiment 
who tried it. In civil life he had been a negro 
vaudeville trooper, done his two a day and 
then loafed. The hard work of a soldier didn't 
appeal to him. One morning Private Coles 
reported at Sick Call and was duly sent over 
to the Regimental Infirmary. 

"Ah has an awful pain in mah head, Doc- 
tor," he said. "Ah kain't drill to-day." 

"Put out your tongue." 

yard or so of tongue was reluctantly ex- 
tended. 

"Hm," remarked the Medical Captain; and 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 257 

then to an orderly: "Bring me a big dose of 
castor oil." 

Private Coles made a grimace and shifted 
uneasily. 

"Mah headache seems better, Doctor!" he 
suggested. 

"Can't take any chances on your case," re- 
marked the Captain. "You need a big dose of 
castor oil." The orderly approached with a 
beaker brimming with the sickly-looking fluid. 
"Ugh," gasped Private Coles. "Doctor, mah 
headache am most surprisin' better." 

"No," persisted the Medical Captain, with 
just the suspicion of a smile around his mouth. 
"This will keep you from ever having a head- 
ache again. . . . Here" — and he handed the 
negro the castor oil — "drink that!" 

"Oh, Lawdy, Doctor! Oh, my oh my! Ah 
can't take 'at, Doctor!" 

"Drink it!" ordered the Captain. There 
was a splutter, a gasp, a groan. "Ugh! . . . 
Whew! ... My Gawd, Doctor!" 

"Feel better?" grimly asked the Captain. 
"Can you drill now?" 

"Yas, suh. Yas, suh," Private Coles made 
haste to say. It was his first, and last, attempt 
at malingering. Wise army doctors find a big 



268 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

hooker of castor oil a sure cure for all cases of 
fake aches and pains. 

Not always too careful in their combing, 
the Exemption Boards sent to camp some men 
who belonged rather in — shall we say Russia? 
— ^than in the army. One refers to the "nuts." 
Now in a certain regiment of a certain canton- 
ment one whispers this story — for the Major 
has never quite gotten over it : A Captain was 
ordered to detail a man for duty as the Ma- 
jor's orderly. Now the Major and this Cap- 
tain had never hit it off together. The Cap- 
tain picked a man from his company and de-« 
tailed him as orderly. 

Be present in the Major's office as the man 
reports. 

A knock at the door, impatiently repeated, 
and the Private enters. A bit ruffled, the 
Major eyes him askance. 

"What do you want?" 

"Private Bugby reports for duty as the Ma- 
jor's orderly." 

The Major looked gratified. Obviously the 
Captain had chosen a well-trained Private* 
Had he not phrased his introduction according 
to the rules of Military Courtesy? Which was 
only right; a Major should have the best. 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 269 

"Private Bugby, you may sweep out the 
office." 

That was the test. The Major watched 
him. He saw his new orderly take a quick 
glance around the room and then, seeing no 
broom, draw himself up to attention, salute 
and depart. "Good!" the Major told himself. 
"Has initiative. Didn't ask me where the 
broom was, but went out to get it. I must tell 
Captain X how pleased I am with Pri- 
vate Bugby." 

Five minutes passed, but no orderly. Ten 
. . . a half hour. 

The Major's annoyance grew greater as 
time passed. 

"The idiot !" he thought. "Where can he be 
looking for that broom?" Presently the Ma- 
jor went out to look for his orderly. He vis- 
ited every barrack in vain. Then in a tower- 
ing rage he sought Private Bugby in the bath 
houses. "Probably hugging the stove — the 
scoundrel!" It was indeed in a bath house 
that the Major found his orderly. Private 
Bugby was seated atop the partition that di- 
vides the showers. His long legs dangled 
down. He was breathless as from some unto- 
ward exertion. "What the devil!" ejaculated 



260 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

the Major. "Private Bugby, what are yoii 
doing up there?" 

But the Private, his mind intent upon some- 
thing else, did not hear him. His arms that' 
had been hanging lifeless began to stir; he 
flapped them up and down. Dumbfounded, 
the Major watched him. "Private Bugby, 
come down!" 

"Cock-a-doodle-doo!" burst from his or- 
derly. "Cock-a-doodle-doo!" and madly his 
arms flapped. 

"Private Bugby," shouted the Major, "come 
down!" 

This time the "rookie" heard him; he seemed 
to start as if from a trance. "Can't do it. Ma- 
jor. It's ten o'clock. Every morning at ten 
I must crow. . . . Cock-a-doodle-doo!" 

With blood in his eyes, the Major went to 
find the Captain. Quite blandly — the Cap- 
tain's friends say — he pointed out to the Ma- 
jor that he had asked him to have the Colonel 
convene a board of officers on the case of Pri- 
vate Bugby and that twice the Major had 
scoffed at the idea, remarking: "He's only 
stalling you. No recruit passed by the Local 
Board physicians is insane." So with "Cock- 
a-doodle-doo!" ringing in his ears, the Major 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 261 

made haste to start proceedings for Private 
Bugby's discharge. 

The psychological tests that were held in 
every cantonment were irreverently called 
"nut examinations," and the learned psycholo- 
gists who conducted them were known as "nut 
pickers." Every command in every National 
Army cantonment, officers and men, had to 
report to the "nut pickers." Come with us to 
this examination. Into an empty ward of the 
Base Hospital at a cantonment the soldiers file 
and, sitting on wooden benches, face the psy- 
chologist. 

"You are each supplied with a set of ques- 
tions. When I say * Attention!' hold up your 
pencils in your right hand and read the first 
questions. When I say 'Go!' write the an- 
swers. When I say 'Attention!' hold up your 
pencils again and read the second; then I'll 
say 'Go!' again, and so on. . . . 'Attention!' " 

The men read the first question on the 
printed slip. They see the figures of a circle, 
a square and a triangle. These overlap. 
They read they must "make a cross in that 
part of the circle which is not in the square ; a 
check in that part of the square which is out- 
side of the triangle; a dot in that part of the 



262 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION \ 

triangle which is inside the circle but not in- 
side the square." Scarcely enough time to di- 
gest this, then "Go!" Scarcely enough time 
to make the markings desired — two seconds — 
then "Attention!" again. 

"What the hell is this for?" mutters a Pri- 
vate. 

"Silence!" glares the instructor. And so 
for an hour he alternately calls "Attention!" 
and "Go!" while the men wrestle with the pro- 
voking things the printed sheet calls for and 
under their breaths curse the learned man with 
the glasses for not giving them enough time. 
Under "Questions to Determine Common 
Sense," they find the following: 

"If you found a drunken man on the street 
and he struck you, what would you do?" 
(Cross out the solution not applicable.) 

1. Take him home. 

2. Knock him down. 

3. Reason with him. 

4. Turn him over to the police. 

5. Leave him. 

One "rookie" disdained all the solutions and 
wrote on his paper these thirsty words: "I'd 
ask him where he got it." 

And so the questions of the "nut pickers" 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 263 

went. At the close of the written examina- 
tion, the men were then each given a box filled 
with the disassembled parts of the following: 
a monkey wrench, a coin bank, a pants hanger, 
an electric button, a door lock, a bicycle bell, 
and a mouse trap ! 

"You will begin work on these articles when 
I say *Go !' " announced the psychologist. 
"You will cease all work when I call 'Atten- 
tion!' Ready? . . . Go!" 

While the "rookies" were fumbling with the 
mouse traps and all, their Captain took occa- 
sion to question the psychologist about what it 
all meant. 

"Why, Captain," said that learned person, 
a little grieved, "we correct every paper. We 
can tell you by the result of this examination 
what men will be most valuable to you." 

"The devil you can!" thought the Captain. 

"By these tests we save you months of 
work," went on the psychologist enthusiasti- 
cally. "We obtain observations that you 
would never get in a year. By a study of the 
examination papers we can tell you the best 
place for every man in your command, just 
how his mentality fits into the work you have 
planned for him. You will find our report a 



264 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

way to correct mistakes you must have made.'* 

Bicycle bells that "rookies" had feverishly 
put together tinkled throughout the room; 
mouse traps clattered; locks turned. Fever- 
ishly the "rookies" worked on. 

"And the object of this — the mouse traps?" 
asked the Captain. 

"That," replied the psychologist, "that de- 
termines for you the men with mechanical in- 
stinct. Why, only the other day we found a 
private who put together everything in four- 
teen minutes ! He certainly was a mechanical 
genius." 

Whereupon the Captain set himself down 
to give it a tryout. After losing the springs 
of the coin box on the floor ; after twisting hor- 
ribly a lever in the bicycle bell; after cutting 
his finger on a piece of tin in the mouse traps, 
he hurled what was left into the box and 
sought the psychologist. 

"What did you say that fellow was who put 
together that bunch of junk in fourteen min- 
utes?" 

"A mechanical genius," replied the psychol- 
ogist. 

"Rather, a damn fool," sweetly corrected 
the Captain. Later he sought out two of the 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 26^ 

brainiest specialists of the Medical Corps who 
had taken the test. 

"Doctor," the Captain asked one of them — ^ 
a Major, a noted eye and ear specialist of New 
York, "I heard you took that psychological 
test. What mark did you get?" 

"Forty-six per cent. — deficient," laughed 
the Major; "but they told me I'd improve on 
a second test." 

"Yes," chipped in another specialist, "and 
they say if you get one hundred per cent, they 
put you down as a nut." 

Yes, in those early days of the National 
Army, when rifles were short, the men an- 
swered such psychological questions as, "What 
product is 99 44/100 per cent, pure?" and the 
learned ones got surprising answers like 
"Lemp's Beer." 

It was during that formative period of the 
National Army that laughs tempered the rou- 
tine. The salute — no matter how precisely ex- 
plained — was forever getting the "rookie" in 
hot water. One day when a Brigadier Gen- 
eral was strolling around our cantonment, he 
met a soldier who failed to salute him. The 
General stopped him. "How long have you 
been in camp?" 



266 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

"Oh, about a week," replied the Private 
chummily. "How long have you been down 
here?" 

The General gasped, and then unburdened 
himself. It was this same General who at 
"Saturday inspection" made a point of unex- 
pectedly descending upon different companies 
in his brigade to personally inspect them. This 
habit had every Captain on the jump. There 
was a Captain in the regiment whose company 
had been one of the last to receive its recruits. 
Thoroughly undisciplined as they were, he 
awaited with misgivings a possible visit by the 
General. Nor were his doubts set at ease 
when he thought how he had overheard 
"rookies" speak of him as "Bertie." His first 
name they had somehow discovered to be Ber- 
tram. So bright and early Saturday morning 
he was around the barracks, seeing to it that 
the preparations for Inspection were made, 
that the floors were swept underneath the cots, 
that soiled linen was out of the way, that all 
extra clothing and mess kits were clean and 
orderly spread out on the bed-sacks. Then 
ten minutes before the inspection hour, getting 
a tip from the Regimental Adjutant that the 
General had his company marked for a visit. 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 267 

he ordered them all out in the barrack yard. 
There he faced them and earnestly said: 

"Be sure all your buttons are buttoned; that 
your shirt collars are turned down; that your 
legging laces are tucked away; that there are 
no pins, watch chains, ornaments of any kind 
showing. . . . And, oh, yes, one other thing: 
If the General asks you your Captain's name, 
for God's sake, it is Captain Howe." 

The General came, strutting at his left side 
and ever so perceptibly to the rear his Aide- 
de-Camp, a "shave-tail" Lieutenant. " 'Ten- 
shun !" bawled out the Captain. His "rookies" 
came to their different conceptions of what 
"Attention!" was. Spinning round with an 
about-face, the Captain saluted the General. 

"Captain, I will inspect your company." 

With sinking heart, the Captain ordered: 
"Open ranks! . . . March!" 

Somehow they executed the movement, were 
"dressed" and ordered "front." Then accom- 
panied by his Aide-de-Camp, the General be- 
gan his Inspection, the Captain, wishing him- 
self in 'No Man's Land, accompanying him. 

"Hm," remarked the General. "Some of 
them need hair cuts." Then what the Captain 
dreaded happened. 



268 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

"Private," and the General addressed him- 
self to a lanky "rookie," "you should know the 
names of all your officers. Now who is your 
Captain?" 

The Captain glared at the rookie. The 

rookie became flustered. "Captain ," he 

thought. "Captain What in hell did he 

say his name was?" 

"Come, Private," said the General sharply. 
"What is your Captain's name?" 

"Bertie," exploded the thoroughly rattled 
Private. 

"Howe, you idiot," hissed the Captain; "my 
name is Captain Hov/e!" 

Greatly surprised, the General turned to 
the discomfited officer. "Captain Howe, this 
will never do — such familiarity with your men. 
Bertie, indeed!" And the Aide-de-Camp who 
had led cotillions looked grieved to his soul. 
But the Captain's laugh was to come. Far- 
ther down the line, the General questioned a 
fox-faced little "rookie." 

"In the army," the General said to him, "we 
have Saturday Inspection. It is prescribed by 
Army Regulations. Every soldier must be 
neat and clean, must be ready to be inspected. 
Now why, Private," concluded the General, 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 269 

*'do you suppose that is? What is the purpose 
of Saturday inspection?" 

In terror, the Captain waited for his rookie's 
answer. 

"I'll tell you how it is, General," he said 
confidentially, "in civil life the boss gives you 
the once over every morning ; sees if your shoes 
are cleaned, and all that. But in the army 
with their Saturday inspection I guess they 
want to check up that the army is clean one 
day out of seven." 

The Captain froze the grin that flickered on 
his lips. Like many officers, he judged the 
idea of Saturday Inspection a pernicious one. 
Why not daily inspections ? He saw the Gen- 
eral gulp once or twice ; he saw a gleam in the 
rookie's eye. Then without a word the Gen- 
eral passed on. He was big enough to see the 
rookie had him. 

Now as was originally pointed out by Shaw, 
I believe, and it has been made the theme of a 
score of short stories, "an Irishman can save 
every country but his own." We have him in 
the National Army by the thousand, the type 
that believes Columbus must have had Irish 
blood in him and — whist! — Napoleon was a 
"good Harp" who changed his name — may the 



270 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

Saint pity him! There is such a wild, fighting 
Irishman in the 3 — th Infantry at Camp Dix. 
He has his own story of the war, and he never 
wearies of telling it. He blarneyed his way 
into the Captain's office, his first day in camp, 
and poured it into his ears. I have heard it : 

"Whin th' Dutchmen bate little Belgium — 
bad cess to thim!" Private Hogan invariably 
begins, "I run round t' Schweitzer's saloon 
wit' me pals Casey an' Dugan, and offers t' 
beat him up, th' dirty haythen that he be. 
'Schweitzer,' sez I, 'th' Kaiser's a dirthy black 
Protestant.' 

" *Sure,' sez Schweitzer, as he took me 
money fer th' beer. 

" 'Schweitzer,' sez I, *I am an Irishman, a 
good one, mind ye, from th' South o' Ireland, 
one wit' no Protestant relations, and I can lick 
twinty Dutchmen.' 

" 'Sure,' sez Schweitzer, 'und vhy doan't 
you try id?' 

"So I chucks th' beer in his face and was 
Ijust about t' jump on his big Dutch belly whin 
th' cop comes an' saves Germany. Dennie 
Murphy gets th' judge t' let me off easy an' 
sez if I want t' fight so much t' go t' Canada." 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 271 

So with Casey and Dugan, his pals, Private 
Hogan in 1914 turned up in Montreal. 

"I want t' fight th' Dutchmen," he told the 
Recruiting Sergeant. "Casey an' Dugan, two 
fine laddie bucks, come up wit' me, too." 

Private Hogan said they grabbed him, that 
he passed the Medical Examination with fly- 
ing colors and was passed on to an officer to 
be sworn in. 

"Casey they chucked out," he says; "his 
lungs wuz bad. Dugan, the dirthy black- 
guard, took the oath!" and he pauses impres- 
sively. 

You ask, "Why were you sore at Dugan? 
Didn't you go up to take the oath too?" 

That is Private Hogan's meat. 

"They got me in a room," he boils, "wit' an 
.officer sittin' at a table, wit' a picture o' th' 
King over his head. Th' officer sez to me: 
*Repeat after me, Hogan: I do swear alle- 
giance to His Majesty the King. Right there 
I called a halt. *And I'm t' let me American 
citizenship slip up?' I asked th' officer. 

" *Sure,' he had th' gall t' tell me. I looked 
him in th' eye. *I'll be damned if I swear me- 
self t' become no British subject. Me Mother 
Machree t'would kill her.' 



272 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

"So th' deal wuz off. I beat it back to Jer- 
sey City. A year later I meet Dugan. He 
wuz walkin' on a cane. He had been a fine 
broth o' a lad. Now he looked like a ghost, a 
miserable hundred and tin pounds. 'Pwhat 
th' divil, Dugan,' sez I, 'an' p what's come over 
ye ?' And sez Dugan t' me : *Mike, they put 
me in th' Princess Pats an' at Wipers th' 
Dutchmen gassed th' tripe out o' me.' . . . 
Well it was comin' t' Dugan fer lettin' 
his American allegiance slip an' becomin' a 
damned British subject." 

And like Private Hogan's Captain you cau- 
tion him again : 

"You must not speak that way about the 
English. They are our Allies. They are fight- 
ing bravely." 

But Mike is obdurate. 

"Sure it be th' Irish fightin' for thim. Ain't 
Gineral Haig Irish?" 

"No; he is Scotch." 

"No, Captain," pleaded Mike; "Gineral 
Haig a dirthy black Scotch Protestant? 
Doan't say that, please. Captain." 

"It's true, Mike. The Scotch, English, and 
Welsh are doing their part as well as the 
Irish." 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 273 

And Mike scratched his head. "Wil', they 
didn't get me t' change t' no Britisher, them 
Canadians — bad luck t' them." 

"Private Hogan," the Captain said stern- 
ly, *'I order you never to speak with disrespect 
of any of our Allies." 

"Yis, sir," replied Private Hogan; and 
alone in a squad room he'll again hold forth to 
any one who will listen to him. 

One does not intend to suggest that Private 
Mike Hogan is a composite of those of Irish 
descent in the National Army ; but there is his 
type, victims of street corner orators and revo- 
lutionary Irish newspapers printed in our 
country. They will suffer untold hardships 
for America ; but when they think of England 
they cannot think coherently. Yet, on the bat- 
tle line they would die for England, too, these 
fine, brave, chivalrous people whose love for 
Erin never dies, for whom destiny has written 
that they shall fight under all flags but the 
green. . . . To every American in the Nation- 
al Army who believes the story of the snakes — 
a toast! 

Each regiment having its own staff of phy- 
sicians, the cases of those whose acceptance 
into the army, when physically doubtful, are 



274 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

examined into there. There was a recruit — ► 
who shall be known as Hawkins — who came to 
us from a Syracuse Exemption Board. Upon 
giving over the Form 14, the report of the 
medical examination, made by the Local 
Board, we noticed that Recruit Hawkins had 
claimed exemption on the grounds that he was 
"near-sighted." We asked him about it. Yes, 
he had great trouble with his eyes. He was 
near sighted. He wrote a note to the Regi- 
mental Surgeon and sent over Recruit Haw- 
kins to the Infirmary for a re-examination. 
Our First Sergeant went with him. Carefully 
the doctor tested his eyes. Long suspicious of 
this rookie, the Sergeant watched him closely 
throughout the examination. 

"Sergeant," the doctor called, "this man is 
all right. Nothing the matter with his eyes. 
Take this message to your Captain," and the 
doctor handed him his report. 

"Come along, Recruit Hawkins," said the 
Sergeant. "You stay." 

"But I'm near-sighted," whined the rookie. 

"You don't say so!" grinned the Sergeant. 
"Well, just because you are near sighted we're 
always going to put you in a first-line trench 
so you'll be sure and see the enemy. See?" 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 275 

And lo ! the rookie's eyes were cured and he 
is to-day quite well. 

The drivers of jitneys infesting the National 
Army cantonments charged the soldiers out- 
rageous prices to "go to town," refused to stop 
for those who were alone, always wanting 
"parties" ; in short, made themselves complete- 
ly annoying. In most of the cantonments the 
military authorities stood it for about a week 
and then slapped restrictions on the whole 
grafting crew. What these orders were re- 
garding jitneys, the Captains passed on to 
their men. 

"No jitney driver," a Captain told his men, 
"is allowed to charge more than fifteen cents 
for any ride anywhere inside the limits of the 
cantonment. If a jitney refuses to take you 
at that price, get its number and we'll have it 
barred from the camp. If a jitney with empty 
seats refuses to take you as a passenger — it is 
their practice to try and pick up soldiers in 
twos and threes, so as to get their load quickly 
— you have a right to protest and to make that 
driver accept you." 

"Beefy" Flanders, a rookie, pondered over 
this. He had an idea that the jitneys were 
turning him down because, as the fellows said. 



276 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

"he took up too much room." He had a griev- 
ance against jitney drivers. Beefy Flanders 
had — against the whole tribe of gasolene ban- 
ditti. 

Picture him then on a Saturday, *'Pass 
Day," struggling through the mud and rain 
to the railroad station. He heard a jitney. It 
was the third one he had heard that soaking, 
pelting noon hour; the other two had whizzed 
past him in the rain, flicking mud upon him as 
they passed. But this jitney would not get by 
— not if Beefy knew it. Planting himself 
squarely in the road, his soaked suitcase like a 
parapet before him, the rain dripping from 
his campaign hat, he awaited the car's ap- 
proach — a pot-bellied Colossus, defiant. A 
horn honked a warning at him to get out of 
the way. Beefy peered through the rain. . . . 
No, the seat beside the driver was vacant. 
. . . The rear seat seemed full. Too bad; but 
he'd ride with the driver. . . . The car, show- 
ing no sign of stopping, bore down on him. 
The horn blew angrily. Beefy felt the rain 
beating on his face. . . . No, he'd be damned 
if he'd walk any farther. . . . "Stop!" he 
yelled. "Stop!" 

The driver threw on his emergency, and the 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 277 

light car — ^it looked like a "flivver" — skidded 
in the mud. 

"Wow!" shouted Beefy, as the car spun 
round on the road. "That's what you get for 
trying to pass me up." 

Picking up his suitcase, he took his time 
about going to the point where the chauffeur 
had finally brought the car to a snorting stand- 
still. 

"Are you crazy?" asked the driver, as Beefy 
unlatched the waterproof curtains and heavily 
deposited himself in the seat beside the steer- 
ing wheel. "What do you mean by stopping 
this car and climbing in?" 

"Is that so?" said Beefy, fishing in his wet 
clothes for a cigarette. "Huh! Since when 
are jitney drivers wearing soldiers' overcoats 
and hats? You take them off or I'll report 
you to the military police. My Captain said 
I was to do that." 

From the back seat Beefy heard a snicker. 

"Hullo, fellers! Going home? Hell of a 
day, ain't it?" 

"Shut up, you fool; that's Brigadier Gen- 
eral X . This is his car!" 

"My God," panted Beefy; and then, in 
alarm: "Let me out!" 



•278 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

But a voice from the back seat was speak- 
ing. Beefy heard a chuckle. 

"Why, Colonel," some one was saying, "that 
Private stopped us because he thought this car 
was a jitney. I told the Quartermaster that 
these cars they were issuing to Brigadier Gen- 
erals looked like damned flivvers." And so 
Beefy rode with his General. 



CHAPTER XIII 



"the magic of mars" 



We call our country the "melting pot." Its 
metropolis has been called the "garbage can." 
iWe have thought that the sturdy and adven- 
fturous of our emigrants have gone striding out 
from the steamship piers of New York into 
[the rumble of our nation, into wide spaces of 
harvest lands, cattle ranges, or with pick and 
shovel have made railways possible. But New 
(York — ah, that was the refuse, the "scum of 
Europe" ! New York, with its sweat shops, its 
East Side, its soap-box orators, its impudent 
youth of the proletariat and bourgeoisie alike 
— soldiers out of that stuff? Absurd! 

Out near the end of Long Island, cut from 

a straggly woodland, a stumpy place of sandy 

roads and drab backgrounds — there one finds 

Camp Upton. There one finds the East Side, 

the "scum of Europe"; for there New York 

has sent its quota to the National Army. 

279 



280 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

There one sees the material of which the skep- 
tics said it would be impossible to transform 
into soldiers. Housed in its rows and rows of 
two-story barracks one discovers: the Five 
Points Gang, Sing Tong of "Bloody Angle," 
Isidore Cohen of Rivington Street, T. Travers 
Ashton, the artist, of Washington Square 
South, and exquisite dabbler in anarchy on the 
side; there one finds Willie Wisenheimer of 
the motion picture offices and Johnny Mims 
who takes his girl every Saturday to see a 
"show"; and there, too, one finds Powers, the 
son of the financier. 

If you know intimately your New York, 
you know these types and the things they 
stood for. You know that their lives moved 
on certain defined lines like toys on a string — 
the "beat of a cop," the grace of a cheap poli- 
tician, the pursuit of gold, the mandates of 
some new and neurotic philosopher, the gossip 
of the Rialto, the subway to and from work* 
or whether to go to this or that dance. Of na- 
tional consciousness most of them had none. 
Legally they were citizens; spiritually they 
were not. A sense of obligation to this coun- 
try? That was a void. . . . But all this was 
before they were called to the colors, before 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 281 

there was cast upon them the Magic of 
Mars. . . . 

"Where sons of God yield up their breath 
There is no gain eoccept by loss." 

In one of those colorless rooms in the brick 
building on the Konigs Platz of Berlin, where 
sits the Supplementary General Staff of the 
enemy's War Machine, I, in 1914, with other 
correspondents heard the half- dead General 
von Moltke say these words: 

"War is a biological necessity. Too long a 
period of peace degenerates a nation. War 
purifies it. War purges it of the degenerate 
blood. War is the Great Cleanser." 

Now that is a sample of the pap that the 
masters of modern Germany instilled into 
their people for forty years. We as a people 
do not believe so materialistically that "war is 
a biological necessity." Nor does our Presi- 
dent; nor our army and navy leaders. Our 
spirit is keyed higher; ours is a war against 
war — a holy 'strife to rid the world of the 
Hohenzollern's medievalism, the influences of 
which have caused many wars. No; war is 
not a purifier, but — if I may repeat. 



282 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

"Where sons of God yield up their breath 
There is no gain eoocept by loss" 

We are yielding up our breath; we are 
yielding up our lives. What is our gain? It 
has taken war to make us a nation. In sixteen 
cantonments of our National Army hundreds 
of thousands of men are finding America. 
Through them, millions of their relatives and 
friends are finding America. Old Mars, and 
Mars alone, possessed the magic to make the 
melting pot really melt everything. The 'Na- 
tional Army is leading us to America. . . . 
The New York gangster, what good is he? 
Melodramas sniveled him to our sympathy or 
in the newspapers we read the cold facts of his 
killings. A creature of our social system, what 
good was he to America? Come with me into 
one of the big, clean examining rooms of Camp 
Upton. A board of Army physicians is sit- 
ting upon the case of Recruit Miggs (John 
L.). They conclude that the Exemption 
Board which sent him to camp made a mistake. 
His heart fails to come up to army require- 
ments. They tell Recruit Miggs that he will 
be rejected and sent back to his home. 

See him there over in the corner? That 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 283 

wide-shouldered man with the thin legs and 
the arms dangling down like a gorilla's ; coarse 
black hair plastered down over a low, bulging 
forehead; still in civilian clothes, a checkered 
cap twirling uneasily in his gnarled hands. 

"I got ter go back. Doc?" he asks. 

"Yes, Recruit Miggs. We find a decided 
indication of cardiac." 

Gloom settles in the bloodshot eyes of Gun- 
man Miggs. 

"Can't ye fix a guy up?" he begs. "I don't 
want ter go back. Doctor, on the level. I'll 
give yer the whole thing straight. Doctor. 
When I got wise they'd draft me, I beat it; 
but the cops nailed me. One of our gang once 
went broke. His gal left him and he joined 
the army. He come back once and wised us 
that all he did was t' wash the officers' dishes. 
That queered the army with me. But when I 
come down here, I doped him for a liar. It's 
been fine here. Doc. I got a square deal. No 
cops around. I seen the boys with the knives 
on their guns t'other day sticking 'em into 
bags. I liked that. I liked to shove one into 
a Dutchman's belly. A Dutchman double- 
crossed me once, a cop he was, what had a girl 
>vorking for him. I can kill Dutchmen. I 



284 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

want ter kill 'em. If yer send me back to New 
York, th' gang'll kid me. The boys'U say I 
must be a cheese if th' army cans me. Then, 
Doc, that gal o' mine'U only get me doping 
again, I'll plug a guy some day when I'm 
half nuts and I'll get th' chair. Here I can 
live decent and be away from the cops. The 
officers make a guy feel he's somebody. I'll 
kill Germans, bunches of the bastards !" 

The Army doctors conferred. "I think he'd 
make good," one said. Remarked another: "I 
think, Doctor, that with proper work, his heart 
would stand it." 

The voice of the gunman interrupted them : 
**Please, Doc, for God's sake, let me stay! 
It's me one chanst." 

The Medical Captain wheeled on him. 
^'You stay, Recruit Miggs! Go back to your 
barracks." 

Time passed. September, then autumn 
scuffled out with dying feet ; it was November. 
New recruits were pouring into Camp Upton. 
As quickly as they were accepted by the army 
doctors, their Captains turned them over in 
fours and eights to Non-commissioned officers, 
the now blase veterans of three months — Sep- 
tember's recruits who had already made good. 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 23:? 

In the barrack yard of the 3 — Infantry one 
such group faced a natty, businesslike Cor- 
poral. In his spotless, trim-fitting uniform it 
was hard to recognize in him the East Side 
gunman, the Recruit Miggs, who had pleaded 
for "a chanst" and gotten it, 

"Now, men," said Corporal Miggs; he no 
longer used "guys," "at the command Right 
Hand — Salute! do what I do now," and smart- 
ly the old gunman snapped up his hand to the 
brim of his hat. "Got it, men?" 

Fingers close together, arm in a straight 
line, and up came four arms, and out burst the 
eloquence of Corporal* Miggs. 

"Foist man! Swing yer elbow around more 
t' th' front. . . . Second man! Say, you've 
been a soldier before!" 

The recruit, a fair-haired, blue-eyed yo.uth, 
denied this. 

"Say, quit yer kiddin' !" admonished Miggs, 
"and let me hand yer a tip: don't lie in the 
army. Now, what's yer name?" 

The recruit flushed and did not reply. 

"What's yer name?" roared Miggs; he was 
going to add, "or I'll plant you one," but re- 
membered the Captain's caution about "plant- 
ing" in time. 



286 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

The blond youth replied: "Herman 
Schwartz." 

"Hey?" demanded Miggs. 

"Herman Schwartz." 

"A Dutchman, hey?" and Miggs deliber- 
ated whether to hand him one or not, just for 
luck. 

"I'm not a Dutchman, sir. I'm an Ameri- 
can." 

That "sir" sounded good to Miggs. He 
smiled to himself; if the gang could only see 
him now! 

"An American, yer say," he said, enjoying 
his power; "but yer served in an army. Yer 
didn't learn to salute like that making beer, 
did ye?" 

The German boy blushed and hung his head. 

"I served my time in the German Army," he 
admitted. "My brother is in it now. I don't 
want to fight my own family.'* 

"Yer don't, hey?" observed Miggs grandly. 
"Then Squad . . . 'Ten-shun! Recruit 
Schwartz, youse come in an' see the Captain 
wit' me. . . . Squad . . . Dismissedr 

Businesslike? Good judgment? Yes; the 
National Army did that in three months, re- 
claimed one of the East Side's gunmen, made 






OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 287 

a genuine citizen of what used to be jetsam but 
which as a "citizen" could vote. 

The prophylactics against typhoid and 
para-typhoid threw panic into the youth of 
Grand Street, transported to Camp Upton. 
An Artillery Captain there told me Ikey 
Cohen, quite white and worried, came into his 
oflSce. Ikey had just been jabbed in the arm. 

"Oi, Captain. I'm seeck!" 
Go out and drill," directed the Captain; 
it'll do you good." 

"But I'm seeck, Captaine — such a headache 
— ^mit der needle in der arm — oi 1" 

And so Grand Street in the 3 — th Field Ar- 
tillery came to sing a song at Upton. To the 
tune of In My Harems they chanted : 

"01 the needle, the needle. 

The Prophylactic needle! 

Oh, my arm don't have a minute 

The needle isn't in it ! 

Paratyphoid; oi, oi, typhoid; 

Captain, I'm so seeck ! 

All they do is punch me full of holes 

All through the week. 

Oi, the needle, the needle. 

The Prophylactic needle! 
, I should be in bed, 

* But I have to work instead ; 

- The Captain tells me it's good for me." 



288 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

For a time, in the early days, Upton housed 
a battalion of the 15th Infantry, New York 
National Guard — negro troops. The colored 
boys were sent to the cantonment to act as 
sentries until the drafted rookies were soldiers 
enough to take over guard duty. One night, 
returning to Upton from a week-end in New 
York, an Artillery Captain saw one of the 
negro privates confronting an Irishman who 
^vorked on barrack construction. 

"Say, looka yere," exclaimed the negro, "I's 
[tired mos' t' death tellin' yo' fellahs t' turn ohf 
dat water when yo' quits work. . . . Cohp'ral 
ob der guard!" 

The Irishman mumbled something. 

"What's dat yo' sa>4n' dere, fellah? Ah's 
got a gun. Ah has. . . . Cohp'ral ob der 
guard !" 

Ten minutes, half an hour passed with the 
Irishman glowering at the negro's rifle, with 
never a word from the Corporal of the guard. 
In disgust, the colored private turned to his 
prisoner : 

"Say, fellah. Ah guess der Cohp'ral's got a 
li'l' bottle o' gin somewheres. Gwan, now, yo* 
clear outer yere! . . . What's dat yo' said? 
lYo'Il bust mah face! . . . Cohp'ral ob der 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 289 

guard!" No response; then: "Gwan, man; 
Ah haven't time t' arrest yo'. Gwan 'long. 
Doan't bother me !" And off stalked the sen- 
try, crooning to himself a song. 

It was at Upton that they had a "bull pen." 
The commander of the negroes had a deep pit 
dug in the ground; on the bottom a tent 
was pitched, around the top barbed wire was 
strung. That was the "guardhouse." In 
there a prisoner "stayed put." Now near the 
"bull pen" the Y. M. C. A. pitched a circus 
tent, a recreation place for the negro regiment. 
One night they brought a piano to the 
Y. M. C. A. tent and some one played. At 
once from the "bull pen" there issued a happy 
melody of song. The ten negro prisoners 
down there began turkey trotting as they 
sang, and above them, fringing the barbed 
wire, half the battalion grouped itself, while 
their comrades in the "bull pen" led the song. 
A strange crew? They'd sing in hell. 

It is at Upton that one is brought face to 
face with that fact which stares at one from 
every National Army cantonment. Whole- 
heartedly most of our newspapers have sup- 
ported the war. To be sure, there are editorial 
writers who should be General Staff Chiefs, or 



290 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

Ordnance Chiefs, or Quartermaster Chiefs. 
There are writers born to be Secretaries of 
State and others Generals in the field. Dur- 
ing the war there will be much criticism that 
will be hysterical; much irresponsibility; much 
toying with men's reputations with pen and 
ink; but as a nation we must abide with that. 
It is a price we pay for the freedom of the 
press, and almost no price seems too high for 
that. It is flesh and blood of democracy. Yet 
we could be more cautious, less irresponsible. 

Now there was one company at Camp Up- 
ton which drew its quota from the upper West 
Side of New York City. Some of the men 
were high school graduates; others college 
graduates, others shrewd graduates of New 
York City business. Most of them in civilian 
life had disliked the army. In the army one 
had to be obedient; they rarely obeyed their 
parents. In the army one's superior officer 
was a man upon whose decisions they should 
rely and whose orders they should unhesitat- 
ingly obey. In civilian life, the man in the job 
above them was generally "a dub who had 
gotten around the boss" and whom they fre- 
quently tried to dig pitfalls for. It is a cyni- 
cism of New York business that a man spends 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 391 

one quarter of his time on his job and three 
quarters trying to scheme out a way to get the 
job of the man above him. Camp Upton 
drew its quota of these men. Will they make 
soldiers, these sons of a shallow and shrewd 
bourgeoisie, with their suspicion of authority, 
these utterly undisciplined lives? Let us see. 

On Headquarters Hill at Upton, a tall 
white flag pole stands stark, and from its tip 
the flag flies brilliantly against the brief gray 
of a winter twilight. After the bugles have 
blown the "Assembly" for "Retreat," stand in 
front of army barracks and watch. Linen 
salesmen, box office men, the darling of the 
skating rink girls, they're all there. But 
they've lost the debutante slouch; they look 
you steadily in the eye; they obey promptly; 
they have respect for all their officers; they 
almost love their Captain. 

Come into their barracks at night. Talk to 
Jack, who was called to the colors just in the 
nick of time to save him being spoiled by the 
womenfolk of New York's society fringes. A 
good-looking chap, he jumps up from his 
bunk, calling Attention to the whole squad 
room as he spies the officer with you. 

"How are you getting along. Private Cum- 



292 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

mings?" the officer asks him, "and what do you 
think of the war?" 

"Private Ciunmings thanks the Captain, sir. 
He never thought much about the Kaiser one 
way or the other. But since he's been here, sir, 
he's getting madder about the Kaiser every 
day." 

The Captain notices a textbook on the bunk 
and picks it up. "Officer's Manual," the Cap- 
tain reads aloud. "What's this — studying?" 

"Yes, sir," replies Private Cummings; "the 
Captain announced he would recommend some 
men from the company for the next officers' 
training camp, and if one wants to have a 
chance at it, one must study." 

"Good!" exclaimed the Captain. "Keep 
at it." 

And Jack Cummings, who had trifled 
through high school, buried himself until taps 
in his book of military lore. In another part 
of the barracks you find a group of men study- 
ing French. This is a time after hours when 
the men get the idea that their officers are 
human. 

"I advise you men," remarked the Captain, 
"to study French at every opportunity. When 
the Regulars went over last summer they 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 293 

didn't know French. The soldiers picked up 
the word, ^Ouif meaning 'Yes,' and said 'Oui' 
to everything. One day in a village where a 
company was billeted a pretty girl came up to 
a soldier and asked him something in French. 
He couldn't understand, but replied 'Oui' In- 
stantly she threw both arms around his neck 
and began kissing him. He thought her crazy 
and shouted in alarm. He struggled with her, 
and finally broke her hold on his neck. A po- 
liceman came up; she poured out her story to 
him in French, and our bewildered comrade 
was taken off to jail. In court it developed 
that in French she had asked him to marry 
her. He replied 'Oui' — *Yes.' She had em- 
braced him, he had repulsed her, shaming her 
in the eyes of the village. So unless you want 
a flock of breach of promise suits, men, learn 
to speak French." 

Or visit another part of the barracks and 
you'll see the former lace salesman busying 
about with pad and pencil, buttonholing his 
comrades, taking down subscriptions for a 
Company talking machine and records. And 
as you leave, what impression have you? 
Brotherhood! War has drawn them all to- 
gether, given them a common interest — their 



294 pUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

country, and with it they're pledged to a com- 
mon goal : the defeat of the enemy — Imperial 
Germany. 

Yes, the National Army is the Melting Pot. 
We used to think of the melting pot in this 
way: that Bohunks, Wops, Poles, Hunkies, 
Harps, Kikes, what not, were poured into it 
and magically fused into Americans. The 
trouble with that conception was that it con- 
cluded that every one who spoke English was 
an American. Those who thought deeply upon 
our country knew that to be an idle dream. 
They knew that our unnationalized public 
school system, our toleration of anarchy and 
socialism, our toleration of insidious foreign 
language newspapers, our wrong conception 
of our army and navy, our sectional selfish- 
ness, our lack of national discipline, indeed al- 
most anything national, had made of the 
**melting pot" a chimera. And those whose 
thoughts are penetrating to-day likewise know 
that the National Army has made the "melt- 
ing pot" a reality; for it has given us national 
consciousness. For the first time our genera- 
tion is now thinking in terms of America — our 
English, as well as our foreign-tongued peo- 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 296 

pie. And that is to the glory of our new army 
and our President who decreed it. 

You remember that German boy whom the 
former gunman, Corporal Miggs, haled off to 
see the Captain? Recruit Herman Schwartz 
saw the Captain; so did Leo Birkee, an Aus- 
trian, and Pietro Carmino, an Italian, and 
Ludwig Wrubel, a Pole. They saw the Cap- 
tain at the same time he saw all the members 
of his company, that afternoon, just before 
retreat in the mess hall. And the Captain told 
them all : 

"In our Company are men born in foreign 
lands. Some of them speak English imper- 
fectly. But they are here, for the same reason 
you are here — to fight for America's liberty. 
And like your fathers some generations ago 
came over here to gain liberty, so did the 
fathers of your foreign-born comrades only a 
few years ago. And I want the utmost good 
feeling between you and them. I don't want 
you to laugh at their mistakes in English; I 
want you to correct them kindly. Remember 
in the eyes of the President you're all alike — 
America's soldiers. And in the eyes of God 
you're all alike — His soldiers, fighting a nation 



296 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

of barbarians, the Huns." . . . There's your 
real melting pot. 

And if you care to follow further the for- 
tunes of Herman Schwartz who told Corporal 
Miggs he would not fight in the American 
army against his own blood, come with me into 
the office of the Colonel of the 3 — Infantry. 
Recruit Schwartz's company commander is 
there with him, and together they face an 
eagle-eyed, eagle-beaked warrior of our Reg- 
ular Army. 

"You say," began the Colonel, "that you 
won't fight against Germany." 

"I won't fight my own blood," stubbornly 
repeated the blond boy. And then the Colonel 
began to talk. He told Recruit Schwartz of 
the Germany that was and the Germany that 

is, and how it had tricked the German people 
as well as every other nation in the world. 

"You have served in the German army," 
said the Colonel. "You know how the Ger- 
man officers treat the privates. Is there any- 
thing like that here?" 

"No," replied the recruit; "but I hear they 
won't let our officers stay with us. They tell 
me that in Europe the American army will be 
put under English officers." 



OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 297 

"And who told you that?" asked the 
Colonel. 

"I read it in the " And he mentioned a 

German- American newspaper. 

"I thought as much." And when the 
Colonel told him that he would go to war with 
his present officers, Schwartz seemed amazed. 

"But they're too decent to us, our officers,'* 
he objected, his thoughts fleeing to some Ger- 
man barrack yard; "not a man has been 
flogged yet," he added triumphantly, as if that 
were the crowning argument that their Amer- 
ican officers were not to take them to France. 
For an hour the Colonel talked to that Ger- 
man boy, and when he was finished Recruit 
Schwartz said: "Colonel, I'll fight. The 
HohenzoUerns must be beaten — for the good 
of the German people as well as America." 

Yes, tell the drafted men why\ what it's all 
about. Explain the draft to them, the salute, 
"retreat," the need for drill, discipline, unhesi- 
tating obedience, and they'll see it all through. 
They become interested in their new work. 
They feel they are somebody, not mere ma- 
chines. They gain pride in their new profes- 
sions. And the National Army is being told 
the why of it all, which is why it is a most pow- 



298 OUR FIRST HALF MILLION 

erf ul force for Americanization, and why it is 
becoming an efficient army. 

Come along to the Artillery. See that Bat- 
tery, standing Retreat, that little Italian with 
his heels together. See the Greek there who 
used to keep a flower shop. He's standing like 
a statue now; might have stepped down from 
a pedestal in the Pantheon. See that little 
Syrian boy there, bow-legged, shoulders still a 
little rounded, but trying so hard to stand as 
straight as the tall, lean Norwegian beside him. 
"To the colors!" the bugles are playing, and 
they all stand still a statuesque guard as their 
flag is lowered and put to sleep for the night. 
... And day is but breaking when they're 
out again; in line, at attention, as the flag 
climbs the tall pole on Headquarters Hill. 
Thirty thousand men saying good-morning to 
the colors. From the kitchen, savory hints of 
breakfast come. Bayonets dimly glimmer; 
sentries are going off post. Another day in the 
lives of thirty thousand men, who only months 
before had no sense of national responsibility, 
has begun — begun for America. And the 
beauty of it is that it all seems now a matter of 
course, noblesse oblige. . . . Over America 
spreads the dawn. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




011 284 894 



